An interview with Ulla Kruhse-Lehtonen, CEO DAIN Studios Finland, Co-founder at DAIN Studios
We sit down with Ulla Kruhse-Lehtonen, CEO DAIN Studios Finland, Co-founder at DAIN Studios. DAIN Studios stands for Data, AI, and Insights providing consultancy in data strategy, data governance, machine learning, BI, and data engineering.
How did you end up at Dainstudios and what problem does DAIN Studios solve for its clients?
DAIN is a data, analytics, and AI consultancy that helps companies define their data and AI strategy (business opportunities, needed enablers) and then implement it.
As the CEO DAIN Studios Finland, Co-founder, what are your main responsibilities at DAIN Studios?
I'm in charge of our P/L in Finland. That means business development, sales, recruitment, and project delivery. DAIN has 80+ data and AI experts with roughly half of them in Finland.
How do you lead your team to organize and improve the marketing-sales process to increase sales and enhance the customer experience?
We take pride in being a trusted advisor to our clients. That means that our people focus on understanding their customers' needs so that they can make value-adding proposals for new projects. Account management is key.
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 DAIN Studios, and what key elements does it encompass?
For new customer acquisition, we follow many paths. A lot of new business comes inbound via recommendations. For outbound, we do telephone calls, send targeted emails, use our LinkedIn connections, write white papers and blogs, and organize and attend events.
What is an efficient marketing technique that you've implemented at DAIN Studios or previous companies, which you believe is underutilized by most management teams - and why do you think that is?
This isn't a new thing, but it's often still not employed skillfully: Using data, analytics, and AI for content personalization and customer targeting in a consistent manner.
Has your C-level team experimented with some kind of cold outbound strategy (like cold email)? If yes what was the general outcome and if no, why not?
Yes, we have done both cold emails and cold calling. We've noticed that there are some differences between countries. In Finland, cold calling works well for AI topics; in Germany it doesn't work at all.
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