Welcome to the third installation of our Voices of Acoustic blog series! Throughout this series, we’re highlighting members of our team from different backgrounds, geographies, and parts of Acoustic to give our audience a closer look at who we are and what we believe in.
So far, we’ve introduced you to Scott Opiela, our CMO, as well as John Riewerts, SVP of Engineering. Here, we invite you to meet Sofía Arrambide, VP & General Manager of Latin America. Let’s dive in!
Acoustic: What inspired you to pursue a career in MarTech?
My background is quite technical to start with: I studied software engineering at college. I knew I wasn’t going to end up programming (although I loved it), and at that time, I started realizing I was good at connecting two dots: understanding end users’ expectations from software and mapping those into programming objectives.
This was really the turning point. I realized I could speak both “languages” fluently and found marketing software most interesting since the abyss between marketer needs and software providers was immense. This has changed throughout the years as software providers have increasingly developed tools that meet the needs of marketers, but there’s still work to be done.
What are you most excited about when considering the future of the industry?
The MarTech industry is finally getting to a point where amongst software providers, we have acknowledged it’s OK to be strong in different areas – there’s a growing respect and even eagerness to work with other providers for a customer. Brands have also recognized the benefits of surrounding themselves with great providers that excel at what they do, rather than looking for one solution that does one thing well and others mediocre. However, with this shift comes the challenge of integrations. If you have many satellite providers that can’t talk to each other, you lose the ability to gain a complete view of the end customer.
I look forward to the industry continuing to evolve in this sense – to have open architectures that allow us to easily integrate and expand use cases. I see collaboration and co-creation as trends that are here to stay, and we are seeing the diverse ways in which they materialize. Some capabilities must be embedded into your platform, but others can be done through plug-and-play integrations to make sure there’s still plenty of room for innovation.
What do you find most interesting or rewarding about your work?
My work is filled with adventure, starting with the management of an amazing team in Latin America, which requires the desire to always learn about cultural differences within the territory. Within one region, we have 33 countries. Even the word “marketing” has a different meaning in many of these places!
I also really love to dive deep into customers’ needs, help them draft their marketing maturity assessments and plans, and assist with executing them so they can reach their objectives. This is one of the most rewarding aspects of my work since I learn about retail, travel, entertainment, finance, and many other industries from a single role. Getting to see how a customer boosted online sales, increased conversions, and/or improved their customer retention rate using our solutions makes it feel like our success too, like a true partnership.
As VP and General Manager of Latin America, one of your responsibilities is to oversee our customer relationships in-region. How do you help our team build trusted customer relationships? What advice do you have for other leaders looking to foster a customer-obsessed culture?
From my viewpoint, the key is truly maintaining those relationships with the customers, which requires a whole lot of work, listening, research, and creativity. This starts with regular check-ins, but normally leads to more extensive initiatives like identifying where the customer is in terms of reaching their goals and where they want to be in the next six months. We then work together with all of our customers’ stakeholders, including those from other software providers, to make sure we’re harnessing the power of their MarTech stack to be successful. We get creative with our assessments and help customers think outside the box, yet in alignment with their corporate objectives.
My advice to other leaders looking to foster a customer-obsessed culture is to invest in employees every step of the way. At Acoustic, we have great leaders who have implemented an employee-first approach, which I now have the privilege of upholding. When we feel valued and get to engage in meaningful work not only with our customers but also as a service to our society that feeling of positivity permeates everything else, both inside and outside of work.
Looking ahead, many brands are focused on investing in solutions that help them future-proof their marketing strategies. Please share some common challenges you see brands facing today and advice you have for overcoming these challenges to realize success.
Where to begin! There are a number of challenges marketers face today, but some of the most common include:
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Creating a privacy-first data strategy: Consumers have high expectations for personalized experiences, but this is becoming more challenging in a digital world increasingly governed by privacy. Prioritize above all a strategy to activate first-party data, which is primarily data collected through channels you own such as your website and mobile app. With less reliance on third-party data, you can create personalized experiences without sacrificing consumers’ privacy. This is a decision you can make today. Start small and keep building.
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Integrating the MarTech stack: MarTech utilization is another common challenge for marketers. Use your marketing solutions for their strongest capabilities, but then allow space for them to “talk” to each other where appropriate. Platforms with open architectures that enable marketers to squeeze all value possible from their tech stack are critical.
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Gaining a complete view of the customer: Clicks are inflated by bots, opens are spiked by Apple Mail Privacy Protection. Traditional engagement metrics like these are only going to keep getting less reliable and therefore, less suitable as the only KPIs present while building the marketing funnel. So, take the extra leap: go beyond these metrics. Today’s customer engagement technology allows us to collect much more than just user clicks in the digital funnel. There are many customer signals that you may not be capturing, such as the number of times they hovered over a button, likely indicating a higher intent to purchase, or cursor movement across different sections of the page, which may be a window into user preferences. These details open a world of nuances that allow you to quickly identify those customers who are more inclined to purchase.
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Embracing complexity: Delivering a flawless customer experience is always the goal, but mistakes happen. What’s important is to prepare for these hiccups. Did your customer’s purchase fail? Well, have a process to identify the real reason (e.g., delivery region out of range, stock not available, broken payment field on your site, etc.), and send a message that speaks to their specific experience. Evolve from the standard abandonment campaign to one that embraces the flaw, empathizes, and hopefully has a resolution or a plan for one. All mistakes are excellent opportunities to show the human, empathetic side of your brand. By creating a hyper-personalized response, you can expect better results than other isolated marketing efforts.
Thank you for joining us and providing your insights, Sofía!
If you’d like to connect with Sofía, you can find her meeting with customers in Latin America; drinking mate, a traditional South American herbal drink, to jumpstart her mornings; or visiting the countryside during the weekends hoping to catch a thunderstorm. You can also reach out to her on LinkedIn.
This is the third installation in a multi-part series focused on the people at Acoustic. You can check out previous installations below:
Keep an eye on the Acoustic Digital Experience Blog for future editions!
