Tell us about your journey and how you landed your current role as the CRO at Fintel Connect.

My background is actually in finance and economics, but I was connected with our founder around 11 years ago and fell in love with what she was building. Those in affiliate marketing know that the channel is a perfect match between advertorial and PR, and what attracted me to this industry was the inherent foundation of partnership where everyone wins—brand, affiliate, and consumer. The opportunity to work at a technology company that really specialized and offered ways to scale and create efficiency with this type of marketing was exciting. Fintel Connect emerged from another business that we ran in a different industry. We recognized a huge opportunity in financial services and evaluated whether we could really make a difference and create value by bringing a new solution to the space. My background and career have focused on growth, which means leveraging scrappy marketing and creating meaningful partnerships and relationships. As a result, I took on the responsibility of driving the growth of the business forward.

What key strategies do you implement at Fintel Connect to drive revenue growth?

We strongly believe in creating value for our clients and our industry. Therefore, we strive to offer thought leadership, educational materials, and insightful content that is engaging. This approach establishes us as a destination for individuals seeking such insights, and we aspire to be known as the foremost provider of growth marketing solutions for financial brands. By fostering strategic partnerships and delving deep into this niche, we are working to solidify our credibility and expand our presence. However, we consider ourselves to be only at the beginning of our journey.

What works better for revenue generation during an economic downturn—sticking to the basics or doing something out of the box?

I believe it’s important to be realistic about what truly makes a tangible difference for your business. In our case, we understand the formula that works, so we focus on strategies that can have the greatest impact. For us, thought leadership revolves around creating valuable content, providing education, and sharing insightful perspectives. However, other businesses might achieve it through different direct channels or paid avenues for broader awareness. The key is to strive for predictability. While the basics are important, it is crucial to leave room for experimentation. You never want to fully commit your resources. But experimentation is valuable because you never know where an opportunity might arise. Of course, it should be well calculated. You need to set clear goals, measure the results, and adapt as you go along. The most important thing is not to put your business in a state of discomfort or at risk. So, striking the right balance between tried-and-true methods and calculated experimentation is the way to go.

Familiarize us with the technologies you leverage to accomplish Fintel Connect’s revenue objectives.

Well, as a B2B business operating in the financial services industry, our sales cycles tend to be quite lengthy. To manage our processes effectively, we rely on CRM tools like HubSpot. In fact, we recently implemented their marketing solution, which has been beneficial for our email marketing campaigns and overall workflow. To stay organized, we utilize tools like ClickUp, which helps us manage our time and development tasks. Speaking of development, we make use of platforms like GitHub and DevOps to streamline our development processes.

When it comes to channels for communication, LinkedIn takes the lead as the primary digital channel for engaging with our target audiences. We also leverage Twitter to establish ourselves as thought leaders in the industry. We also use SEMRush for web optimization purposes. However, in terms of importance, our email marketing campaigns and CRM system are key tools for us. So, with these tools in our arsenal, we are able to enhance our operations and effectively reach our goals.

How does Fintel Connect ensure the best experience for its customers?

It all boils down to understanding the pain points of our customers and creating products and solutions that effectively address those challenges. We firmly believe people are willing to invest money to eliminate pain or friction. With our specialized approach, we have diligently identified and defined these friction points in terms of growth and compliance. We have developed tools and features that are intuitive, user-friendly, and designed to alleviate those pain points.

We are not ones to shy away from feedback. In fact, we actively seek insights from our clients, end users, and publishers to gather direct feedback on how we can enhance our offerings. Their input is invaluable in making improvements that simplify their lives, empower them to excel in their roles, and have a more significant impact. This feedback constantly informs our development roadmap, ensuring that we are always evolving and delivering the best possible solutions. After all, our goal is to make a positive difference and enable their success.

How do you ensure alignment of sales, marketing, and customer success teams to keep revenue goals on point?

Communication plays a pivotal role in effective leadership. We make it a point to cascade specific targets, insights, and information about what is working and what is not, ensuring everyone is on the same page and understands their role in the organization.

In our company, we view marketing as an extension of the sales team, as their efforts directly contribute to sales performance. However, it is crucial to acknowledge that marketing’s success is also dependent on feedback and input from the sales team. It is a collaborative relationship where both teams work hand in hand. When we onboard new clients, our customer success team plays a vital role in gathering insights and understanding the unique motivations and priorities of our clients. This valuable information is then shared with the marketing and sales teams, ensuring we are all aligned and working towards the same objectives.

By maintaining this open line of communication and feedback loop, we create a cohesive environment where everyone understands the needs and goals of our clients. This approach allows us to provide the best possible solutions and ensures that all teams are working together harmoniously toward customer success.

How do you measure and optimize the effectiveness of your revenue growth initiatives?

We focus on aligning our efforts with revenue-related metrics and understanding the key factors influencing them. We analyze both activity-based and results-based metrics to assess the effectiveness of our efforts and the impact on our growth.

From an activity standpoint, we measure metrics related to volume and quality. We set targets for each business area that generates net new growth opportunities. It’s essential to evaluate whether we are reaching the right audiences and if our marketing efforts are generating the desired volume of opportunities. Moreover, we assess the conversion rate and quality of these opportunities from a sales perspective. We consider factors like messaging frequency, number of touchpoints, pipeline development, and conversion rate of the pipeline.

In addition, we also track metrics related to cross-selling and upselling to our existing clients. This allows us to maximize opportunities within our client base and further contribute to our revenue growth.

By consistently monitoring and analyzing these metrics, we can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of our strategies and make informed decisions to drive sustainable growth.

How are Fintel Connect’s solutions transforming the fintech landscape for the better?

Our overarching vision as a business is to become the digital backbone for financial brands. Right now, we specialize in customer acquisition and tools to provide transparent insights into their marketing efforts. We’ve since evolved our solutions to meet compliance and monitoring needs as fintechs and brands expand their marketing efforts. Our future vision is to allow finserv marketers to have all the data, transparency, and protection they need at all stages of the funnel—from acquisition to conversion to retention and beyond.  

Ultimately, our goal is to enhance people’s access to exceptional products and brands. We aspire to support these brands in their innovation journeys, enabling them to continually deliver outstanding solutions to the market.

You have been leading PostcardMania as its CMO for 14 years. Brief us on your journey.

I started working at PostcardMania in 2004, straight out of college. I was originally hired to run a project to partner with franchises and then was promoted to launch all new products as the Vice President of Business Development. Five years later, our VP of Marketing gave notice, and Founder & CEO Joy Gendusa asked me to fill his shoes (which I have to admit was a bit terrifying). At that point, we had a $4 million marketing budget, and I didn’t want to mess it up! It worked out, and I was able to outperform existing metrics and was eventually promoted from Vice President of Marketing to Chief Marketing Officer. It’s now been 19 years, and I feel very lucky to have been part of this company’s journey as we surpass $100 million in annual revenue. We continue to evolve our products around an unwavering commitment to helping small business owners grow their businesses and contribute to an expanding US economy. Currently, my team is made up of 10 marketing professionals who are all experts in their fields and generate more than 2000 B2B leads each week.

Please walk us through Everywhere Small Business, PostcardMania’s flagship marketing product, and the recently added features.

Everywhere Small Business is our multichannel marketing campaign package that gives small business owners the opportunity to target prospects with postcards and coordinated digital ads on Facebook, Instagram, Google, Gmail, and YouTube. As the postcards are mailed out, digital ads are displayed to prospects on these platforms, and not only do they amplify the client’s reach and exposure and make it seem like their business is everywhere, but they also give prospects an easy way to get to clients’ websites to convert.

The recent features we added to Everywhere Small Business expand the reach of those coordinated digital ads by targeting prospects based on their online behavior and the physical locations they visit. So, for example, a vet could target people nearby doing research online on why their cat might be throwing up at night or people visiting a local dog park.

The best part about the new Browsed-Content Targeting and Visited-Locations Targeting is that small business owners have access to premier technology previously only available to large brands. And at prices that a small business can afford. By leveling the playing field with bigger brand names, small businesses can achieve success and grow bigger and better than before—and that’s PostcardMania’s driving mission.

What major alterations have you made in marketing strategies to sail through economic downturns like the current one?

PostcardMania was founded in 1998, so we’ve been through our fair share of tough economic times. We had our first major economic challenge in 2008, which ultimately gave us the experience we needed to be better prepared for any economic downturn.

In 2008, 46% of our revenue came from clients in the mortgage and real estate industries, and we lost thousands of clients almost instantly when the housing bubble burst. Against our gut instincts, we cut our marketing spend significantly based on advisors’ recommendations. By 2009, we were struggling to make payroll and were down 15%. It turned out that reducing our marketing budget had made everything worse. So we decided to restore the marketing budget back to pre-crash totals, and our numbers recovered quickly—2010 ended up being an all-time high revenue year for us at the time.

We learned the valuable lesson to never stop marketing regardless of economic conditions, and we applied this principle when the pandemic hit in 2020. We never cut our marketing or even laid off a single staff member despite our revenue crashing over 40% for several weeks in March and April 2020. But we recovered more quickly than most. July 2020 became the new highest-ever revenue month for us. In the final six months of 2020, we increased our leads by 9.24% without increasing our marketing spend. Our competitors all cut back, which ended up making our marketing efforts more effective than ever. Every year we get a little bit smarter and more efficient with our marketing efforts, but consistency is something we have kept in since day one. It’s honestly our biggest piece of advice to clients, and it doesn’t change even during an economic crisis.

What is PCM Integrations, and how does this technology work for marketers?

PCM Integrations is one of our newer divisions that has been expanding by leaps and bounds. It is a direct mail API which is basically a software connection between us and any other software to automate mail going out. It gives businesses the opportunity to automate mailings based on triggers like when a shopping cart is abandoned or if a new lead is entered into a customer relationship management system. Business owners can automatically target their hottest leads with mailers at a key time in the buying process, and it is a one-time set-it and forget-it process. It gives brands the opportunity to automatically increase credibility by 49% over just sending emails to prospects.

We have clients switching over to us from other direct mail APIs every day because of our vast knowledge of direct mail design for response, as well as our print quality. Other direct mail APIs outsource the production to many different printers, which means the quality control of the finished product is nonexistent. We also don’t charge tech fees which can save companies tens of thousands of dollars a year. It was a natural fit for us to build out a development team to offer this based on our existing capabilities and experience. I don’t know any other company with as much direct mail marketing experience as us. We have over 110,000 clients at this point.

Despite market conditions being on the downside, how did PostcardMania reach new revenue records?

I think it goes back to building so much momentum during the pandemic by never pausing our marketing. Since then, we’ve reached new revenue records in 2020, 2021, and 2022, growing total revenue an average of 20% per year after a decade averaging 5% revenue growth. And the momentum is still rolling—we just set a new quarterly record in revenue in our first quarter of 2023 at over $25 million and $1.8 million more than the same quarter last year. We also achieved the most revenue in a single month in March of 2023, right at the end of the quarter.

That success has come from our commitment to pushing forward with our marketing strategies, increasing our marketing spend despite economic challenges, and adding new direct mail marketing solutions in the past couple of years. We mail 190,000 postcards a week and spend more than $5 million a year on marketing. Since we switched from a print focus to a technology focus, growth has reached a new level. Everywhere Small Business, our retargeted direct mail solutions and PCM Integrations are sure to push us to new heights for the rest of the year and beyond.

Name 3 things you do to ensure marketing, sales, and customer success are on the same page.

Good leadership has a massive influence on the fluidity between departments. The C-level executives here are actually friends, and we’re all working towards the same goal. There is no finger-pointing; we’re working together to make improvements or fix issues. We’ve worked hard at developing this over the years, but this is still one of our top priorities. We all do a trip every year and several other team-building dinners and meetings throughout the year. Last year, we promoted a longtime PostcardMania staff member, Jackie Wirsing, as Chief Experience Officer. It’s her job to boost clients’ results by enhancing the quality of our operations throughout the business. She has helped us improve the internal performance of our staff and the customer experience for our clients. As a guiding hand, she figures out how to help each department and division work more effectively and efficiently toward the goal of improving client success. She’s been doing a phenomenal job, and we’ve witnessed a tremendous difference overall.

What advice would you like to give to budding marketing professionals?

Don’t underestimate the amount of promotion you need to do to get people’s attention. Between direct mail, online ads, social media ads, and email, we are sometimes hitting prospects 20-100 times before converting them to a sale, and we are reaching up to 250,000 businesses every week. Don’t get frustrated or discouraged if you don’t see results right away. Stay the course and market more than you think you need to. People can be super indecisive these days, and they are being hit with so many marketing messages that you need to be persistent and consistent.

How do you foresee direct mail technologies evolving in the upcoming years?

Like many other marketing tools, direct mail has evolved and become automated. This means the technology is intelligent enough to mail postcards, letters, or brochures to people based on their actions in real-time. Currently, we have a service called Website to Mailbox that can mail a postcard to an anonymous website visitor within 24 hours. The technology can capture a visitor’s location, match it to an address, and even select certain mailers based on their browsing behavior, like which pages they read, for how long, and more.

Our PCM Integrations division has also created new avenues that let businesses send fully responsive mailers any time of day without lifting a finger. A business can connect its CRM to our direct mail platform to enable triggered mail based on actions taken at any point during a customer’s lifecycle with the business. A salesperson calls and makes contact with a prospect—or doesn’t and leaves a voicemail—both prospects get a follow-up postcard. Someone purchases from you for the first time or hasn’t purchased for a year, they get a postcard. The options for nurturing leads and fostering relationships are endless.

In the future, I foresee even more specialized technology that can detect specific customer behaviors and react to them quickly. The targeting will get even more detailed and personalized so prospects can find the products and services they need lightning fast. I also see marketers returning to more traditional channels like direct mail as digital advertising becomes more and more saturated and digital response rates continue to dwindle.

Please tell us about your work journey.

My work journey technically began when I was about 7 years old—I would clean my mom’s friends’ homes for the whopping price of $1/room, hah. (Don’t worry; it wasn’t forced labor! I actually enjoyed it, and it was my first foray into entrepreneurship.) Throughout grade school and college, I’d started more than a dozen business ventures, mostly small. But the first one that really took off was in 2008 when I was a freshman at UMB. Through a series of fortunate events, I somehow found myself sitting on a goldmine of an idea—what if there was some way for brands to have real conversations with their customers? And that’s how the first iteration of ViralGains was born. We’re now powering some of the biggest brands in the world and making sure they’re not just talking at their customers but with them—listening and responding with thoughtful ad experiences in response to consumers’ preferences.

ViralGains recently partnered with LiveRamp; we’d love to hear more about how it is going to help marketers and advertisers to extend zero-party data.

Our partnership with LiveRamp is truly a game-changer for ViralGains and the industry. By integrating our AI-based zero-party data (ZPD) gathering & scaling capabilities with LiveRamp’s RampID technology, we’re able to match ZPD from our platform to their vast amount of first- & third- party data, providing a more comprehensive view of the consumer for advertisers on dimensions they could not find previously from leveraging existing solutions in the market. This integration enables brands to create even more personalized and effective advertising campaigns, reach a wider audience, and match audiences to over 250 million consumers in the U.S. Moreover, our partnership prioritizes ethical data management by delivering meaningful engagement through intentionally-shared data within advertising, thus enabling marketers to target a more accurate AND scaled audience in a “privacy-first, privacy-safe” way, all with the added benefit of helping them both optimize—and avoid wasting—ad budgets. Overall, this partnership greatly enhances our ability to help brands truly understand and reach their customers in a meaningful way.

How will this solution help in finding, understanding, and nurturing new and returning customers?

Fundamentally, we are bridging the gap between the power of ZPD and the human element of marketing. Instead of just bombarding potential consumers with generic ads, we’re able to turn data they willingly share into personalized campaigns that truly speak directly to them through their unique needs. All of this fosters a naturally deeper connection and trust with consumers, thus leading to more effective customer acquisition, nurturing, and ultimately better relationships with business outcomes. And the beauty of our approach is that brands are simultaneously gaining a comprehensive view of consumers, all the while doing so in a privacy-first way, a feat that most individuals in the industry would have believed to be two contradictory business outcomes, but now working synchronistically and synergistically.

What are some of the trends defining ad needs and adtech in 2023?

Two come to mind. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I will start by saying that this year and in the years to come:

(1) privacy will continue to be a major, front-and-center, ever-evolving trend for consumers and an important factor for marketers to prioritize. With more and more regulations and societal concerns, ZPD will be crucial in providing an ethical and secure way for brands to gather data and create personalized advertising experiences. Additionally, (2) the integration of AI with technologies like voice and visual search will allow for a more seamless and efficient way for brands to reach their audience while also providing a more natural and intuitive experience for the consumer. 2023 will be a year of massive experimentation with AI in a way that we haven’t seen before to do everything from creative to automation of tasks like campaign optimization to ROI. Overall, the meta focus will be on providing personalized and secure advertising experiences that are easy, intuitive, and meaningful for the consumer.

What are some big challenges enterprises face with gathering and utilizing zero-party data, and what advice would you give them?

You’d be totally surprised by this—and it surprised me too initially—but the most typical challenge I’ve seen marketers face is not knowing what questions to ask their customers! The funny thing about ZPD is that the breadth of insights you can derive from them is limited only in scope to how creative the brand is in coming up with them—and marketers simply aren’t used to that. With first-party data, it’s always so predictable: it’s bland, boxed, and algorithmic. But with ZPD, you can get the sort of insights you’d get from talking to a friend in a human-like way, friend-to-friend, not marketer-to-marketer. And my advice is just that: stop thinking about your consumers as consumers. Who wants to be labeled “a consumer”? It’s yucky and transactional. Instead, I suggest sitting together in a room with the PEOPLE you are most interested in, and have them talk for an hour about themselves and what their core needs are, and THEN understand how your product or service fits into their lives and where the gaps are. The magic of the questions you then need to ask the millions of other PEOPLE who are similar to the initial people will come out of those earnest conversations. And finally, of course, I have to do a shameless plug here: when all else fails, they can, ya know, work with a company that specializes in ZPD for a living and specializes in understanding what the best sort of data to gather would be. I know such a company! :-)

How can enterprises build an ecosystem of partners to share data safely?

This one’s a bit straightforward and just takes good old-fashioned elbow grease. Assuming they’ve already discerned WHY they want to build such an ecosystem, in a nutshell, here are the steps:

• First, they need to internally develop a clear data-sharing policy that outlines the TYPES of data that should be shared, HOW it’s going to be shared (obviously, there’s the pragmatic “how”, but also deciding on levels of data anonymization to protect sensitive data), and WHAT level of security measures ought to be in place to protect that data.
• Next would be researching what data governance tools they want to use to manage and track data throughout its lifecycle while including the important step of regularly conducting risk assessments to identify and mitigate potential threats to data security. This includes identifying and evaluating risks from both internal and external sources. Depending on the sensitivity level of the data, they may want to look for partners that have certain standards for third-party certifications, such as SOC2, PCI-DSS, or ISO 27001, to ensure that partners have robust security and data protection standards in place.
• Finally, the actual data-sharing agreements must be drafted and put into place: having a clear data-sharing agreement that outlines the terms, responsibilities, and rights of each party involved in the data sharing, including the use of the data, retention period, and data destruction will help alleviate a TON of headaches down the road.

Customer behaviors have changed; how should brands change to keep up? Take, for example, do we need to evolve the way we measure purchase intent?

It’s really difficult to speak to any one particular change happening at any given time. The past few years have shown us just how quickly things can shift—from the pandemic to economic factors (like inflation) to revolutionary new technologies like ChatGPT. The meta advice I have to brands is to stay as close to both their loyal (current) customer base and potential (future) loyal customer base as possible through agile, rapid, and real-time feedback loops and to avoid long, drawn-out (and thus likely-to-be-obsolete) responses to changes in consumer behavior.

For example, on the subject of purchase intent, the traditional approach is to creepily follow consumers around and try to interpret their intent after the fact through metrics like site visits, clicks, etc. The “real-time” meta solution to this is to literally ASK THEM how they are thinking & feeling about and perceiving your brand at any given moment using tools like surveys, focus groups, and sentiment analysis. That’s the power of ZPD and is precisely why we focus on it as our core business. It’s the only way to stay up to date in an ever-changing world at the pace of the consumer. Otherwise, you are always one step behind.

What are the tech solutions a brand needs in place to react in real time and create moments for the consumer?

This is a great, pragmatic question. The first thing that comes to mind is that in order to “react”, a brand needs to know what it is reacting “to.” And what I mean by that is to ensure it is not OVER- or UNDER- reacting to what its perceived assumptions are about what its current and prospective customers are thinking or feeling. Obviously, this is where ZPD comes into play and the answer I gave to the prior question. So a ZPD gathering and scaling solution is the first one I would get in place. Beyond that, I would focus on:

(1) real-time web analytics,

(2) marketing automation platforms,

(3) (if the brand is B2B), a salesforce provided insights/intelligence platform,

(4) landing page optimization,

(5) customer data analytics platform (or just a CDP), and finally,

(6) a predictive analytics solution.

In current times, what are CMOs focusing on to adapt/implement in the MarTech & Social-Tech landscape?

In current times, CMOs are embracing the power of data by leveraging MarTech and Social-Tech solutions. By embracing these tools, CMOs can empower their teams to uncover the data and insights needed to adapt and thrive in the ever-evolving business landscape. These technologies are critical to quickly capturing market opportunities, staying ahead of consumer trends, and creating impactful marketing campaigns.

Dash Hudson has just announced the launch of its AI-powered Social Listening solution. How does it plan to disrupt the visually-dominant social landscape?

In today’s dynamic social landscape, communication has evolved beyond traditional text-based interactions, with consumers increasingly leveraging photos and videos to connect and share online. Dash Hudson’s AI-Powered Social Listening solution has disrupted this visually-driven space by providing marketers with the ability to listen beyond text-based conversations while breaking through the noise and bringing the most pertinent data to the forefront.

With nearly a decade of continuous learning, Dash Hudson’s AI technology, Vision, stands among the more advanced tools in the social marketing landscape. By leveraging the power of Vision, our innovative Social Listening solution analyzes and interprets conversations occurring in photo and video formats across social media platforms.

This revolutionary capability empowers marketers to stay ahead of the social curve by identifying emerging visual trends, tracking brand mentions, and closely monitoring real-time customer feedback. As a result, brands can now gain a comprehensive understanding of their target audience’s preferences and behaviors, enabling them to craft highly personalized and impactful marketing campaigns.

How does Dash Hudson’s proprietary Vision AI technology help social listening tools to go beyond traditional features?

As mentioned above, Dash Hudson’s Vision AI technology takes its Social Listening tool to new heights by analyzing conversations happening through visual content, such as images and videos. This advanced technology empowers social media managers to uncover patterns, identify trends and obtain profound insights into consumer behavior and preferences. In addition, the tool also has visual filtering functionalities, which enable marketers to filter out non-relevant visual content to zero in on specific content styles to help analyze performance.

How do you collaborate with different teams to drive business growth?

In today’s business landscape, success is achieved by setting the right strategy and assigning clear goals that foster engagement among employees to help make employees as happy and productive as possible. I believe it is crucial to not only help them develop a deep understanding of their role and place within the organization but also the significant impact they can have.

When collaborating with teams beyond the marketing department, it is important to remember that marketing’s role goes beyond supporting its own function. Marketing must also equip the sales and customer success teams with the tools they need to excel and make a lasting impression on customers. This requires consistent communication and a shared commitment to delivering an impactful customer journey, regardless of whether the intended audience is made up of new or existing clients. By providing essential tools and resources that enable sales and customer service teams to function seamlessly, marketing plays an important role in the overall success of the organization.

How are Dash Hudson’s solutions, like influencer marketing software, social commerce, and creative intelligence, enabling marketers?

The modern social media manager is responsible for many different facets of digital marketing. For example, today’s social media managers are often tasked with developing, executing, and measuring creator strategies and driving e-commerce sales, all while ensuring the content they produce is authentic to their brand while also being entertaining, educational, and aspirational. Dash Hudson’s solutions were developed to seamlessly work together to address their many tasks and workflows while helping them save time and drive consistent business results.

How is Dash Hudson setting itself apart from its competitors in the Social-Tech/MarTech arena?

Dash Hudson is proud to have been rated by the global social media marketing community as the number one platform for ease of use. Dash Hudson was designed to be user-friendly and accessible, making it easier for marketers to create and implement effective marketing campaigns. Further, Dash Hudson is setting itself apart from its competitors by leveraging its proprietary Vision AI technology to analyze and interpret visual content on social media platforms. As mentioned, this technology allows social listening to enter the modern marketing age by providing marketers with a more comprehensive and visually-driven understanding of their customers’ preferences and behaviors.

What’s your approach to planning for marketing budgets and strategies? What makes it easier and more goal-oriented?

My approach to planning marketing budgets and strategies revolves around simplicity, clarity, and alignment with business goals. I believe budgeting should not be a complex exercise but a straightforward process that is rooted in a well-defined strategy and with clear building blocks in place. This approach enables our team to allocate resources effectively toward achieving our objectives.

When planning our marketing budgets, we ensure the process is streamlined and goal-oriented. We start by clearly defining what we need to accomplish for each team and aligning our funding decisions with those goals. We maintain a rigorous analysis of our budget to ensure that we are allocating funds to the right initiatives that support our objectives.

Throughout the budgeting process, we keep a close eye on our goals, such as the cost per SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) and cost per MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead). It is essential to monitor these metrics and ensure they are in line with our forecasted expectations. This proactive approach helps us maintain control over our expenditures while staying committed to our targets.

In the ever-changing social influence domain, what’s your methodology for deciding what’s better for enhanced customer experience?

In today’s rapidly evolving digital world, it is imperative for businesses to prioritize user experience across multiple channels. In the social media landscape, creators play a crucial role in building communities and producing highly entertaining content. As such, these creators help brands promote their products and services to their target audiences in an authentic and engaging way.

When it comes to developing a strong creator strategy, it’s important for marketers to understand that larger audience sizes do not always equal larger results. According to data from Dash Hudson, nano-influencers (1,000-10,000 followers) demonstrate higher effectiveness in comparison to macro-influencers (10,000-100,000 followers) and mega-influencers (100,000-500,000 followers). Nano-influencers exhibit an impressive Effectiveness Rate of 16.5%, which is 143% higher than that of macro-influencers and a whopping 279% higher than mega-influencers. Beyond Effectiveness, nano-influencers also achieve a notable Engagement Rate of 5.28%, surpassing macro-influencers by 171% and mega-influencers by 319%.

Beyond perfecting creator strategy, it is also critically important for marketers to leverage the power of social listening to gain an intimate understanding of the preferences, needs, and desires of customers. Through these insights, brands are better equipped to meet and exceed customer expectations. In doing so, brands will not only enhance the customer experience but also foster stronger customer relationships and ultimately drive business growth.

Can you walk us through the journey that led to the inception of Fintel Connect?

Like every great journey, it started with a problem. About a decade ago, Enterprise Bank in Canada approached us, seeking our expertise to manage and run their affiliate program. This marked our introduction to the world of financial services and affiliate programs. I don’t think Fintel Connect could have existed as a business specializing only in financial services back then. The changes in technology, consumer appetite, the way people use mobile phones, and the additional layers of security involved have allowed for the existence of digital account opening and loan origination systems. These advancements facilitate the power of Fintel Connect because we leverage all those things.

Being female-founded and female-led, how does Fintel Connect differ from other organizations?

The distinction, in my opinion, lies not in our female orientation but rather in our deliberate approach. Like many other businesses, not necessarily limited to this field, we place great emphasis on culture, team building, and making meaningful contributions. We are committed to making a difference.

How do Fintel Connect’s partner management technologies sort things out for organizations?

Our tool, Fintel Performance, offers scalability by providing a solution for financial clients who wish to access multiple affiliates without the need for custom handling. Additionally, it serves as a destination for numerous affiliates seeking high-quality financial products. Essentially, it is a classic affiliate technology that enables both sides to leverage their capabilities. However, our focus lies in catering to the specific and specialized requirements of the financial services niche.

As the world is turning towards AI, how do you plan to leverage it for your business goals?

We are already implementing it. We have compliance technology that leverages AI and machine learning to streamline complex processes and remove the burden of manual tasks. I often compare it to the evolution of calculators, which were once considered advanced technology but are now considered tools. Therefore, I believe that AI and machine learning should be viewed as tools rather than substitutes for intellectual ability. They allow us to leverage their capabilities and enhance our operations.

What organizational and business strategies do you implement to sail through economic downturns like the one right now?

The practicality of managing inflows and outflows of money must be closely monitored to ensure value is delivered. We aim to address real problems and provide meaningful solutions on behalf of our clients. This purposefulness in our relationship is not manufactured; it genuinely holds utility and impact.

How do Fintel Connect’s solutions stand out from the other rival products in the fintech space?

I firmly believe that our strength lies in the fact that we are part of the community and dedicated to serving the community. This distinction sets us apart from other solutions that may also engage with the financial industry but lack the deep immersion we have achieved.

What major disruptions do you foresee happening in fintech in the near future?

In my view, the trajectory of technological disruption remains uncertain, and it appears to be an ongoing continuum. We have not reached the end point yet. However, what I find intriguing is the intersection between fintechs, which focus on addressing specific and customized challenges, and their collaboration with banks, who operate as generalists. This dynamic presents a fascinating landscape to explore.

What advice would you give budding female entrepreneurs trying to make it on their own?

As an entrepreneur, I believe there is a fallacy in thinking that you can achieve success solely on your own. It is the community around you that plays a crucial role, whether it consists of your early founder team, business partners, or supportive friends. None of us truly embark on this journey alone. I do not know what it would be like to be a male founder because I am not one, but I think the key lies in recognizing your own strengths, being resourceful, and acting with intentionality.

Please share your journey in product management, especially with Tellius.

My journey in product management has been diverse, starting as a BI Analyst at Coca-Cola, then transitioning to a BI Architect role at KLA-Tencor. There, I developed critical expertise in data analytics and business intelligence solutions. I further broadened my knowledge as a Sales Engineer at Oracle, gaining deep insight into the market landscape and customer needs.

At GoodData, my career took a decisive turn toward product marketing and management, focusing on strategic areas such as market analysis, product roadmaps, and competitive positioning. This focus continued at Birst, where I took an active role in managing product lifecycles, defining go-to-market strategies, and shaping innovative solutions that delivered customer value.

Today, as Chief Product Officer at Tellius, I leverage my technical background, market insights, and customer feedback to drive our overall product strategy. The diversity of my career path helps me create products that not only meet but exceed customers’ expectations. Effective collaboration lies at the heart of my approach. By working in synergy with cross-functional teams, we ensure our products are finely tuned to meet evolving market demands and cater to the unique needs of our customers.

Tellius was recently named a Visionary for the second year in Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for analytics and BI platforms. Which factors proved instrumental in this success?

At Tellius, we’re thrilled to be recognized as a Visionary in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for analytics and BI platforms for the second consecutive year.

We build innovative features not just based on what’s trending but, more importantly, on how we can help our customers address their challenges and needs. But what makes us truly visionary is our strong customer attraction. We listen, we understand their pain points, and we create. We’re delighted that customers not only love our platform but are continually discovering new ways to imagine using it. We are committed to continually aligning our innovative mission with our customers’ needs, turning their pain points into our next big feature.

Since our inception, we have been seamlessly weaving AI augmentation into every aspect of our platform. This could range from subtle aspects like detecting data types to more visible ones like natural language-based data exploration, auto-visualization, predictive modeling, and storytelling. We believe that AI is not just an add-on but an integral part of the analytics process that empowers any user to generate insights at every stage.

The platform provides a greater degree of agility in analytics than anything on the market today. It enables a rapid analytics iteration designed to foster collaboration between creators and consumers. Our aim is to help users move from data to insights as quickly as possible.

What are your plans to reach a broader audience and capture newer markets in your vertical?

Our central mission is to democratize analytics with AI-powered decision intelligence, focusing on equipping companies with the tools they need to become data-driven. To make our technology more accessible, we are adopting a freemium model, which draws from a product-led growth (PLG) strategy allowing users to engage with our platform firsthand, fully experiencing its potential without any upfront investment. This model’s unique approach gives users the freedom to understand our platform’s capabilities, grasp its intuitive design, and then select a pricing model that aligns best with their evolving needs.

To reach out to newer markets and broaden our audience, our commitment to innovation remains unwavering. We continuously work to enhance our analytics workflow and are resolute in expanding data access to a wider range of personas within an organization. With our autoML feature, which is already fortified with a spectrum of industry-specific models, we are relentlessly expanding the options available to our customers. At Tellius, we’re committed to turning visions into reality, adapting to evolving market needs, and consistently delivering value to our customers.

Collaboration between product, marketing, sales, and customer success teams is essential for growth. How do you ensure that they are operating at optimum levels?

At Tellius, collaboration forms the core of our ethos. Regular stand-up meetings punctuate our week, with product updates flowing seamlessly to our marketing, sales, and customer success teams. This fosters an environment where each department remains in sync with our latest advancements, enabling them to work effectively. Additionally, the product and marketing teams provide weekly enablement content to our sales force, driving a culture of knowledge-sharing and mutual growth.

We have established a consistent feedback loop between our customer success team, sales, and product. This allows everyone to stay updated on key customer requests and issues, fostering a unified approach across all stakeholders. Additionally, our product team remains in constant touch with our key accounts, reinforcing our commitment to account health and customer satisfaction. At Tellius, collaboration isn’t just a part of our workflow; it’s the heartbeat that propels us forward, ensuring we remain attuned and responsive to our customers’ needs.

How does Tellius modernize customers’ data analytics stack while providing a better way to reveal insights?

We’re helping to usher in a new era of analytics in decision intelligence, moving away from the traditional business intelligence approach towards a user-friendly, AI-augmented platform. Our aim is to reimagine analytics as a Google-like experience—easy, quick, and intuitive. By intertwining self-service analytics capabilities with AI, we’ve built a platform that empowers everyone within an organization to tap into the power of data-driven insights.

Our secret sauce? A blend of features that streamline the analytics experience. Natural language search, auto-recommended visualizations, automated insights, and no/low-code data preparation tools allow users to generate insights within minutes. Add to this the power of our dual-analytics engine, which ensures rapid, accurate queries and insights. At its core, Tellius is not merely modernizing data analytics; it’s revolutionizing the entire path to insights, making it more accessible, actionable, and fundamentally beneficial for users.

How does Tellius help industries like Financial, Pharma, Ecommerce, etc., gain AI-powered insights?

At Tellius, we bring the power of AI to diverse enterprises, spanning sectors such as pharmaceuticals, life sciences, ecommerce, CPG, and financial services. Our goal is to transform their data into actionable insights. Within the pharma and life sciences arenas, our AI-augmented analytical frameworks simplify complex data analysis, fostering more informed, data-driven decision-making in areas like market access and commercial effectiveness.

Similarly, in the CPG and ecommerce sectors, Tellius has been a game-changer. We’ve enhanced shopper insights and pricing strategies and even facilitated swift, ad hoc analysis for over a thousand users. In essence, Tellius harnesses AI to deliver practical solutions and shape the future of data-driven decision-making across industries. With Tellius, every business has the means to extract maximum value from their data.

Are there any new launches or newer versions of the current solutions that will augment the growth of Tellius?

With the introduction of GPT-powered Copilot, the evolution of augmented analytics takes a significant leap. Copilot strikes the perfect balance between the power of AI and the strengths of human intelligence by offering features like automated code generation, business-friendly metadata creation, and insightful bite-sized narratives that fortify your decisions.

In our recent upgrades, we’ve integrated a metadata view, a strategic addition aimed at establishing a context and promoting collaboration among users. In addition, we’ve rolled out multi-business view Vizpads, empowering users with a holistic view of insights across varied datasets. These innovative features are continually pushing the boundaries of our platform, ensuring it resonates with the evolving needs of data experts, analysts, and business users. Tellius breaks down the barrier between various personas and data, enabling them to find their own answers and unleashing a level of automation that traditional tools have struggled to match.

With innovation at the core of our business, one of our upcoming features allows users to gain insight into our product roadmap, offer suggestions, and actively participate by voting on potential features. This bridges the gap between the product team and the users, emphasizing the collaborative spirit we champion at Tellius.

How is Tellius’ AI-driven decision intelligence platform unique in the market?

Tellius stands out in the market by embracing three foundational pillars: next-generation self-service analytics, AI augmentation, and superior analytics agility. Our self-service analytical capabilities democratize data access, transforming every member of an organization into a data-driven decision-maker. With a simple, intuitive, and “Google-like” search interface, users can find the data they need without being data experts. Automated insights extract meaningful patterns from the data, bringing insights to light with a click. Our dual-analytics engine ensures quick, responsive queries even for the most demanding workloads.

Additionally, AI powers everything from our simplest functions to our most complex analyses. The seamless integration of AI not only amplifies the capabilities of data analysts but also democratizes ad-hoc data analysis. Tellius’ unparalleled automated insights offer key driver, cohort, and segment analyses right into the platform. Furthermore, our platform enhances organizations’ analytics agility by streamlining workflows and fostering cross-departmental collaboration. Thus, Tellius redefines not just how organizations interact with data but also how they can leverage it to drive actionable, impactful decisions.

Which trends are you focusing on that will drive growth in marketing and sales?

The emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT has marked a pivotal moment in our industry. These advanced AI models will significantly alter the landscape of analytics, and we are strategically positioning ourselves to harness their potential, focusing on these trends to drive growth.

To this end, we’ve developed ‘Copilot,’ an exciting addition to our AI-powered platform. Copilot embodies our vision of automating the journey from raw data to actionable insights, an approach that resonates powerfully with the market’s needs.

Copilot accelerates data preparation while removing the tedious, time-consuming process of adding metadata to datasets. It goes a step beyond simply auto-generating the code by also providing optimization, inline comments, and explanatory notes to make data preparation more efficient and less error-prone. Tellius Copilot extracts key findings, interesting patterns, and trends from your analysis, presenting them as simple, digestible information.

This confident approach to innovation, combined with the adoption of powerful LLM technology, isn’t just aligning us with industry trends—it’s propelling us forward as trendsetters in the realm of AI and data analytics.

What do you think the future holds for AI-driven decision intelligence and automation platforms?

The future of decision intelligence and augmented analytics is promising and dynamic. The convergence of data science and business intelligence is reshaping industry standards, and we at Tellius find this exciting as a forerunner in the automated analysis space. What we are seeing now is a powerful shift towards not just visualizing data but also enabling the automated generation of insights.

We’re at a pivotal moment in our industry’s evolution, particularly with the emergence of LLMs. Traditional players struggle to keep pace with rapid innovation, leading to ill-considered bolt-on services and even retractions. Implementing LLMs demands careful planning, given the risks—such as the ‘hallucination’ rate of up to 20% in popular models like GPT. However, we at Tellius are tackling these challenges head-on. We’ve incorporated the ‘human-in-the-loop’ principle, creating a safeguard against inaccuracies in LLMs. This exciting journey forward brings us to the frontier of industry innovation, and we’re eager to help shape its future.

Can you tell us about your journey and what you look forward to in the new role as a CRO? 

I've always been interested in tech since I first attached a modem (9600 baud) to our home landline. I was in the first wave of internet start-ups trying to make sense of and leverage the power of the internet. Since then, I’ve been fortunate to be part of many different advertising and marketing technology areas, including mobile apps, email marketing, programmatic, personalization, and rich media. It’s been a wild ride. 

Everyone’s talking about the depreciation of third-party cookies, but cookies are not required to identify customers and prospects. At Semcasting, we are re-imagining identity resolution and first-party data onboarding with our patented technology. 

How do you approach revenue growth, and what strategies have been most successful for you? 

In plain language, ground zero articulates how we, as a company, can help our brand and agency clients and contribute to their bottom line. There is far too much “tech speak” in the industry, and frankly, I think it’s almost impossible for most marketers to wade through it all. 

Tell prospects how you can specifically help them. Then we can talk about the technology that supports that solution. 

Can you discuss any trends or recent changes in the industry that are impacting the business? 

Brands want to control their data. So, many brands are in-housing their data and programmatic operations. Capturing, expanding on, and leveraging your first-party data equates to managing your destiny as a marketing organization. 

There are a lot of former agency people who are now running corporate marketing teams. They are far more digitally savvy than the previous generation of marketers, who were more purely focused on offline channels. Today’s marketers also don’t want things to run “business as usual,” where agencies and tech partners take the lion’s share of the media budget without much to show.

 How do you align sales, marketing, and customer success teams to drive revenue growth? 

Everything has to be focused on the needs of the client. We have to remove friction and waste throughout the entire process. Make the value proposition easy to understand, easy to communicate, and easy to implement. You need core metrics across the organization to make sure you are making progress from a sales, marketing, and customer success standpoint so you can measure sales and marketing effectiveness and customer satisfaction. 

The identity resolution market is expanding, so how is Semcasting planning to seize the opportunity? 

How many companies are claiming to resolve the identity issue? Almost every company in the space has some answer to the problem. However, only some are solving the core issues of scale and cross-platform acceptance. The identity resolution market may be “expanding,” but it is also becoming more of a bottleneck - full of misinformation and poor performance. 

Some solutions only work on one DSP, so that is very limiting. Other solutions are only based on emails or login users, which only reach 20-30% of the audience, so those also have no scale. Unfortunately, many agencies and brands are left with a patchwork of cookies and proxy solutions, hoping that something will change at some point. 

At Semcasting, we’ve re-imagined identity from the ground up with a mandate for scale across almost all U.S. households and businesses that works across all major DSPs. The critical difference beyond scale is agency and brand control. 

How do you stay up-to-date on industry developments and incorporate them into your growth strategies? 

Being in the industry for many years, I’ve seen so many fads that I view new technology cautiously. I listen to my smartest customers to stay updated on industry trends. They are constantly testing tech, and if you have an open and honest long-term relationship with clients, then you can trust them to tell you what is working, what is not, and what is interesting. 

How do you measure the success of your revenue growth initiatives? 

The end goal is revenue, but instead of revenue, you have to look at other measures- prospect engagement (meetings), prospect tests (opportunities), growth of the overall pipeline, and tests that turn into long-term contracts. Soft measures include how clients respond to the value proposition or do we clearly understand their priorities and fit into their top 3-5 goals that they want to accomplish. If something is interesting but never a priority to your prospects, you are not in a great position to grow revenue. 

How is Semcasting disrupting the market? 

Our identity solutions give brands back the control of their first-party data onboarding with transparent and better match rates, affordable costs, and faster time-to-market. Knowing who matched and who didn’t empower brand marketing efficiency. 

Semcasting adheres to the highest privacy compliance standards with HIPAA and SOC 2 Type II and HITRUST compliance. Marketers can measure frequency and attribution across platforms with our transparent audience-level understanding of matches and where ads are served. Our data onboarding match rates average over 85%, more than double the industry standard, and our integrations with DSPs allow audiences to be activated in minutes. 

What we’ve been able to accomplish is genuinely different and ground-breaking. 

What do you think about the future of First Party Identity Management, Audience Design, and Measurement? 

Overall, the market will consolidate and evolve toward direct brand control. The deprecation of cookies is not the end of the world; companies must re-assess the old cookie-based approaches to reach their audiences. 

How are first-party customer data and identity resolution solutions revolutionizing the B2B landscape and impacting customer experience? 

From a B2B standpoint, the focus is on identifying quality prospects across many channels while understanding the customer journey. Identity resolution in B2B is about the scale of reach and finding more efficient and cost-effective paths for decision-makers. 

The shift to permanent hybrid and remote work has blended consumer and B2B channels. Identity, done right, requires stocking the top of the funnel at scale with decision-makers wherever they engage. Semcasting helps B2B marketers transparently reach decision-makers and influencers. 

Can you describe your journey so far, and what key takeaways would you like to share?

While I work in Marketing now, I did not start my career there. For my first job after graduating college, I worked as a strategy consultant in the entertainment industry, advising companies on the best ways to navigate a constantly evolving technological landscape. This role helped me realize I wanted to get my hands dirty and work with emerging and innovative products! That insight pushed me to transition to marketing, and I haven't looked back since.

Since joining Customer.io, I have focused on getting to know our ideal customer profile, assessing the competitive landscape, and understanding current market trends. These insights have allowed me to revamp marketing's objectives and set clear goals for the year. I'm looking forward to leveraging what I've learned in past roles to mature the marketing function at Customer.io, better support our customers, and help the team deliver tangible business impact.

It's been just four months since you were onboarded as the CMO at Customer.io. What are you most looking forward to in your new role here?

While it has been a sprint these first few months, I've enjoyed diving into some critical business initiatives. For example, we launched our second product, Customer Data Pipelines (CDP), in April. It's been fun to be a part of a company leading the charge in customer engagement and communication. I've been impressed by the dedication and passion of the team, and I'm excited to continue working with them to develop innovative strategies that will drive accelerated growth and increased customer satisfaction with our expanding suite of solutions.

One of the things I'm most looking forward to is optimizing the messaging and position of our customer engagement platform. Customer.io has a unique offering that can transform how brands segment their customer base and customize their communications. With the right approach, we can reach new audiences and better educate them about the power of our solutions. I'm excited to be part of a company that is driving real change in the industry, and I'm looking forward to helping contribute to its continued success.

What's your approach to driving growth, profits, and resilience in the current economic downturn?

To succeed in challenging times, I try to drive the team toward customer-centricity, data-driven decision-making, and agility.

Customer-centricity is foundational for success because it helps us focus on what matters most with our core audience. By really understanding our customers' needs and challenges, we can develop innovative solutions that help them address their "hair on fire" issues and exceed their expectations around what our product can do for them. In an ever-evolving economic environment, it can be difficult to discern how the market is changing. By taking a data-driven approach to decision-making, you can identify trends and build conviction for your decisions more quickly, maximizing the impact of any marketing investments. Finally, marketers need to be able to adapt rapidly to stay ahead of the competition. The ability to pivot strategies and tactics in response to new trends and market conditions is crucial for success.

Last year, Customer.io launched its Essentials plan enabling startups and small teams to engage customers on mobile and web apps. What are the plans for this fiscal year?

The response from the market to our Essentials plan has been very positive, and we have seen strong growth since it launched. As we look to the future, we are exploring new ways to drive more awareness of this offering and reach a wider audience of teams who could benefit from a robust set of tools at an affordable cost. Also, we want to continue building this plan's value proposition and have a rich set of new features that will be available in Essentials in the second half of the year. At Customer.io, we believe every team should have access to a customer engagement platform to support their business, so we will continue investing in our Essentials plan to support this belief.

How do you stay up-to-date on the developments in marketing automation, and how do you integrate them into your platform?

Staying up-to-date on the latest developments in marketing automation requires a proactive approach. First, I constantly monitor the latest news and trends by following popular thought leaders on social media and reading industry-specific publications/blogs. Additionally, I participate in a few professional associations and community groups to connect with other peers in the field, participate in discussions, and learn what they are seeing & hearing. Finally, I try to speak with our customers on a regular basis. This first-hand feedback is very insightful and helps me understand what is signal vs. what is noise.

At Customer.io, we take a very customer-centric approach to product development. Therefore, a strong, collaborative relationship already exists between myself and the product team. When I develop key insights, I communicate with the appropriate product leaders to integrate those takeaways into product development efforts. Given my role and understanding of our ideal customer profile, I want to ensure that the company stays competitive and meets the evolving needs of its customers.

You introduced Customer.io Data Pipelines (CDP) very recently. Can you shed some light on how it helps companies connect customer data to their tech stack?

Although data management can be a headache, we believe having access to good data is essential for modern marketers to deliver personalization, multi-channel targeting, and product integration. Therefore, we launched Customer.io Data Pipelines (CDP) to help companies connect their customer data to every product in their tech stack. With CDP, teams can easily unify their customer data without writing a line of code. Additionally, our solution keeps your data up-to-date with "out of the box" support for the most common destinations (i.e., Mixpanel, Amplitude, Google Analytics, Salesforce, and HubSpot), so you have consistent data across the tools you rely on most. Finally, by seamlessly integrating with our current messaging product, Customer.io Journeys, our CDP allows companies to build a unified view of each customer and create memorable interactions across mobile and web using push, email, in-app, and SMS channels.

How do you measure the ROI of your marketing strategies?

Our focus is always on delivering value to our customers. To ensure that we align our resources on the most important initiatives, the marketing team at Customer.io uses the OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework. This process helps clarify how we will measure success and who will own the delivery of the results. When we define the measurements for those Key Results, we use a mix of qualitative and quantitative metrics to determine the effectiveness of our marketing efforts. Finally, we set up dashboards based on our OKR metrics to monitor real-time performance across our various team meetings/syncs and complete a formal review of performance at the end of each quarter. By tracking key performance indicators in this way, we can identify areas of improvement more quickly and optimize our marketing strategies to serve our customers better. 

What do you think about the future of customer-engaging marketing automation platforms?

The future vision for customer-engaging marketing automation platforms is inspiring! As a marketer, you are always looking for ways to customize the customer experience because you know that this will drive more engagement. With the proliferation of customer data, the advancement of existing tooling, and the rapid evolution of new AI technology, marketing teams will be able to deliver more personalized and relevant interactions to our customers than ever before! Therefore, companies should focus on investing in platforms that share this future vision and streamline their ability to deliver increased personalization across the entire customer journey via powerful automation.