1. Can you tell us a little bit about your role at ActiveCampaign and how your marketing journey actually started?
I’ve been a marketer from the start. When I was in highschool, I won a business competition in a marketing category through an organization called DECA, which led to a focus in marketing for my undergrad and grad degrees. My career has had lots of growth — from coordinator to manager to director to VP to CMO, all in marketing. And I appreciate how everything I learned in each step prepared me for the next.
Marketing is the strategy of the company, the front of the ship that guides the rest of the organization, and the part of the org that takes all of the amazing things that happen internally and shares them externally. I’m so glad it’s been my path, and am proud to now represent ActiveCampaign in this way.
2. We recently covered ActiveCampaign’s release about the expansion of its Customer Experience Automation (CXA) solution to power service and advocacy through the entire customer lifecycle. How do you think CXA for service solution is going to amplify the personalization of individual campaigns?
Personalization isn’t just about sending an email that has your customer’s name in the subject line. Personalization is about understanding and delivering to a customer’s specific challenges, knowing their past purchases, engaging at the ideal time, and through the ideal channel.
There are marketing solutions that try to solve this problem, but they mostly focus on the pre-purchase touchpoints, and are disconnected from the post-purchase engagement and expansion efforts. Because of this, Support and Success teams fly blind, and engage customers without a real understanding of their preferences, past purchases, existing support tickets, etc. This lack of context makes even 1-1 personal engagements feel distant, and does a disservice to Support teams, who should know the customer the best.
With Customer Experience Automation, Support and Service teams can engage through a variety of channels, including SMS and social, and be prepared to have an intelligent and helpful conversation with context into a shopper’s history. With connected email, live chat, and text interactions, all teams are aware of support issues, upsell opportunities, and more, so they can engage with a true sense of what makes customers happy.
Additionally, CXA for Service supports 1:1 personalized communications through chatbots and nurture flows, so even automated one-off and routine communications feel personalized. These communications are personalized based on data from our platform, but also data from any of the 300+ companies we integrate with, like Shopify or Zendesk.
3. Why do you think that even the most strategic sales teams tend to go a little berzerk on the post-sale customer engagement?
Most businesses have realized the importance of a good customer experience, but delivering an experience that stands out is easier said than done. It’s not for a lack of desire, there are just too many channels, too many customers, and not enough hours in the day.
The other thing to realize is that consumer expectations are only getting higher. It’s not enough to be just “okay,” shoppers today are looking for the “best.” This mentality doesn’t just apply to the product, it applies to the entire experience, including support. Meeting these expectations requires a seamless experience across Marketing, Sales, and Success, so every team is working in lockstep. This is why tools like Customer Experience Automation are so critical. Being able to connect the dots between all the channel specific and point solutions that are used across the customer lifecycle makes delivering that personalized experience natural and effortless.
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