An interview with Adriana Falco, Chief Marketing Officer at Waylay
We sit down with Adriana Falco, Chief Marketing Officer at Waylay. Waylay is a low-code enterprise automation software at the forefront of digital transformation.
How did you end up at Waylay and what problem does Waylay solve for its clients?
I was drawn to Waylay because it offered a great opportunity to utilize my marketing expertise and make an impact. Then the three P’s—product, place, and people—sealed the deal. Waylay’s product impressed me. Their location in a picturesque Belgian town with canals, cobblestone streets, Gothic buildings, and a castle, enhanced its appeal. Moreover, the chance to collaborate with diverse and talented professionals further enticed me. Waylay solves a critical problem for clients: automating complex business logic across various connected assets, IT systems, and outdated applications. Their intelligent automation platform empowers enterprises to seamlessly orchestrate processes across diverse platforms. By applying automation and analytics to extract meaningful insights and trigger actions based on predefined rules, Waylay enables clients to achieve in hours/days what would otherwise take years to build in software. This streamlines operations, enhances efficiency, and creates new value propositions, eliminating manual tasks while fostering agility and profitability.
As the Chief Marketing Officer, what are your main responsibilities at Waylay?
As the Chief Marketing Officer at Waylay, I work closely with the leadership team to track, assess, and respond to revenue results while ensuring the global marketing efforts align with the overarching business objectives of Waylay. In a nutshell, this includes leading the marketing strategies, managing brand consistency, creating spot-on marketing materials and effective campaigns, driving lead gen, overseeing marketing communications, collaborating with strategic partners, conducting market analysis, measuring our marketing performance, and guiding the team.
How do you lead your team to organize and improve the marketing-sales process to increase sales and enhance the customer experience?
My approach to leading the marketing team in organizing and improving the marketing-sales process is centered around tailoring strategies and tactics for each product and market, aligning marketing efforts to drive sales and revenue growth, and enhancing the overall customer experience. This encompasses key strategies such as cross-functional collaboration for a seamless customer journey, data-driven insights to optimize marketing strategies, compelling sales collateral and development opportunities, a well-defined lead management process for qualification and nurturing, ongoing review of the strategies and tactics to identify any areas needing improvement, and a customer-centric approach that prioritizes understanding customer needs. By combining these strategies, we create a cohesive and efficient marketing-sales process that drives sales growth while delivering an enhanced customer experience.
At ColdFire, when we look at our clients' Marketing and Advertising strategies, they vary greatly. Some have found a single, scalable client acquisition process while others thrive on a mix of top-of-funnel strategies. How would you summarize the overarching revenue-focused strategy of Waylay, and what key elements does it encompass?
Waylay’s overarching revenue-focused strategy, from a marketing standpoint, encompasses various top-of-funnel MarCom strategies with a multi-channel approach—such as content marketing, SEO, content marketing, SEO, social media, paid ads, events and webinars, ambassador and influencer marketing, to name a few—to reinforce brand awareness, remain top of mind, and to help drive growth to ultimately maximize revenue and industry market share. Key elements to this approach include sales and marketing alignment, customer acquisition and retention, strategic partnerships, product innovation, data-driven decision making, and customer success stories. By focusing on these key elements, our goal is to achieve sustainable and long-term growth while solidifying market positioning.
What is an efficient marketing technique that you've implemented at Waylay or previous companies, which you believe is underutilized by most management teams - and why do you think that is?
Throughout my career, I have successfully implemented a wide range of highly effective marketing techniques tailored to specific companies, markets, and products. These techniques have consistently delivered positive results and include relationship marketing, account-based marketing, localization and multilingual marketing, outreach marketing, partner referral programs, and retargeting and remarketing, among others. Why management may overlook these techniques may stem from various factors. One common obstacle is lack of comprehensive data and insights necessary to implement a strategy effectively. Without accurate and actionable data, it becomes challenging to make informed decisions and drive successful campaigns. Resource constraints can also prevent management from fully embracing these techniques and allocating the necessary resources. Another factor may be lack of experienced individuals who possess the expertise to implement them effectively. Marketing techniques require specialized skills and understanding. Without a team equipped with the right knowledge, companies may struggle to leverage these strategies to their potential.
Has your Marketing team experimented with some kind of cold outbound strategy (like cold email)? If yes what was the general outcome and if no, why not?
As a Belgium-based technology company, Waylay adheres to the GDPR regulations when implementing outbound strategies targeted toward companies within the EU and EEA. The GDPR is a data protection law designed to safeguard the personal data of individuals. Sending cold emails to individuals in these countries is prohibited. To navigate these restrictions, our efforts focus on alternative push marketing techniques complying with GDPR guidelines. These include leveraging social media, utilizing Google Ads, optimizing our website for SEO, engaging in face-to-face networking at industry events, and leveraging influencer marketing strategies. By utilizing these tactics, we aim to generate awareness and interest among potential customers. We encourage prospects to provide opt-in consent, enabling us to include them in our database for nurturing campaigns and qualifying through other methods. For companies located in countries not under the jurisdiction of the GDPR, we implement a different cold outbound strategy, which can include cold emails.
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