Leveraging Multifaceted Experience for Brevo's Growth in Tech Industry
Can you describe how your past experiences as a marketer, business executive, and engineer have specifically prepared you for the challenges and opportunities in the tech industry, and how you intend to leverage this expertise to drive Brevo's growth in the North American market?
Engineer - My passion for technology took hold when I worked in the speech industry (AI) 25 years ago. At that time, there was no concept of cloud or any access to large databases. It was a labor of love but very slow. It evolved with increased interest in 3G (when phones were voice-only), next with the debut of WiFi (when laptops did not have WiFi embedded). These key innovations always attracted me to understand and experiment with new technologies. Additionally, I have a knack for explaining them in terms of business value and I am able to help customers improve their business by using them.
My Key Learnings: “Stay adaptable and embrace new technologies.”
Marketing - My customer-centric focus eventually led me to consider marketing roles so that I could be closer to them. Marketing is multi-faceted and over time I learned all the different positions (product marketing, demand generation, partner marketing, etc.) When SaaS arrived, it perfectly blended my skills in analytics (probably from my engineering past) and it widened my marketing lens to follow and keep track of the dynamic markets and to test new marketing approaches. In this data-driven, digital economy, it is critical to be a tech savvy marketer to succeed.
My Key Learnings: “Understand market dynamics to scale and recognize the value of experimentation.”
Business Executive - People perform better when they are clear on the vision and understand why we do things. Great impact can only be achieved when there is a team in place that is empowered to make rational decisions to execute on the mission. Businesses only succeed if they have an authentic interest in their customers because markets are always changing and the rate of change also accelerates.
My Key Learnings: “Always take care to grow your employees and keep your focus on your customers for long-term success.”
Fostering Diversity and Inclusivity at Brevo
As a female leader in the tech industry, what personal leadership style do you bring to Brevo, and how do you believe it contributes to fostering an inclusive and diverse work environment?
Collaborative - Cross-team collaboration is critical to me because Marketing is at the intersection of Product, Sales, and Customers. When we do it right, we can align the right product, with the right customer, at the right time, to accelerate sales and bring success to both customers and our business.
Transformational - I like to join teams where I can bring a different perspective. Because I am often the only Eurasia French-American woman in the room, I do bring a new perspective to many conversations. However, you must find a team open and willing to act on these new ideas. Brevo is the perfect match for me.
Cultural Alignment - I have been based in the US for more than 20 years and worked for other CRM companies. Because I am culturally aligned with Brevo’s French roots, I can easily work with the leadership team to define a unique strategy for Brevo to expand in the North American fast-growing market that I know well and build it the Brevo way!
Connections - Brevo is a company with employees as diverse as its customer base so we are poised to succeed because we understand the market and can connect with it better. So every time we enter new markets, we intentionally hire locals or we leverage people from this region to help - even if those people are currently based in Paris.
Key Business Philosophies and Values
Additionally, could you share any key business philosophies or values that guide your decision-making process as a leader?
- Respect - Always be respectful and treat everyone in an organization kindly and professionally regardless of their level or how often you have to work with them. This approach creates a lot of goodwill and people will go the extra mile to help you.
- Transparency - Be transparent about what goes into decision-making, communicate openly about market conditions, and even about office dynamics. It creates trust and empathy so people stick together even in tough situations.
- Believe - I believe in people and in helping them to achieve great things. I often push them beyond the limits that they think they are capable of and they often surprise themselves because they become more successful and better than they initially thought they would be. To foster this, I give them candid feedback - ideally on the spot. Giving feedback, especially constructive feedback, is not comfortable for the giver or for the receiver. It takes energy and courage but you do it because you believe in the person so you invest in that person. The day I stop giving you feedback, you should worry that I don’t believe in you anymore :)
Applying these tenets has always enabled me to build strong, resilient, high-performing teams who work well together even when I leave. When my former teams keep performing and staying tight this makes me proud.
Vision, Mission, and Strategies for Accelerating Brevo's Growth in the North American Market
Brevo has ambitious growth plans in the North American market. Could you outline your vision and mission for accelerating Brevo's growth, and highlight any specific strategies or initiatives you plan to implement to achieve these goals?
Today, the North American market represents 20% of Brevo revenues and we want to double this to 40% by 2025, which is a bigger challenge than just doubling our revenues given that Brevo is growing strongly in all markets!
It’s a bold but achievable objective. Why?
I believe we have a superior product. The CRM industry is mature and has many players. But businesses are still underserved. Small businesses find them too expensive and large corporations too complex. Brevo recognized these gaps and built an easy-to-use, powerful solution that delivers immediate value for your money.
So we have the right product, and there is a strong demand. This is especially evident in the North American market because it is the fastest-growing region in our portfolio despite only an online offering and no previous sales presence in this area until today.
Now, coupling the product fit and market demand with the Brevo ability to execute in this market, which we demonstrated by reaching the Centaur status, I am confident we will achieve these ambitious goals. To be clear, achieving Centaur status is actually based on the ability to execute to reach $100M ARR (recurring revenue) as contrasted with a Unicorn label which is based on expected valuation, not previous earnings. In North America, we already have a strong foundation with our customer support and success teams that serve our existing customers.
Currently, Brevo is actively building up our sales and marketing teams to service bigger accounts. These resources will allow Brevo to execute upon our clear plan to gain market share in underserved markets and solve the top issues that businesses struggle with in customer relationship building.
Stay tuned for more announcements to come…
Power of Community in Driving Change and Supporting Women in Tech Industry
How do you view the power and significance of the community in driving positive change and fostering inclusivity? What role do you believe the tech community plays in supporting and empowering women in tech?
Technology has had a profound impact on society over the past years and it is only accelerating. Social media has changed the way we communicate and the internet has provided better access to information for everyone. The arrival of cloud/SaaS technology allowed businesses of all sizes and budgets to create apps and new services that in the past were reserved for only large corporations with expensive data centers. Speech-to-text technologies help visually impaired users and we have just started to scratch the surface of what the potential of AI will do for all of us.
The tech community plays a critical role in influencing society. However, change and innovation also come with tremendous responsibility but I am unsure that a lot of tech businesses recognize this. Biases can be introduced in AI algorithms due to a lack of diversity in the datasets that train these systems so it is conceivable that they could reproduce outdated societal “standards.” It is a real and urgent concern.
I contribute in many ways to support the expansion of socially responsible technology:
- Personal level - As an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University, I teach a diverse and amazing set of students (some remotely doing an online MBA or Master’s, some working at the same time and doing evening and weekend programs, etc,) about marketing technologies. As a female executive, I am so pleased to see a strong interest in martech and technology in general from women! It is important for me to make sure that they have the best counsel and every opportunity to succeed. It makes me so proud when I follow them and watch their career achievements.
- Professional level - Socially responsible technology is exactly why I joined Brevo. We offer two models. One is a freemium model that many mission-based organizations use to reach out to their community and support each other. For example, Brevo’s freemium model is used by many city halls to reach out to their constituents, churches, sports associations, etc. We really give these hard-working community leaders a voice to make an impact but who don’t necessarily have the funds or the tech-savvy to use complex tools. Our offering is the most approachable CRM on the market for these groups. We also offer our paid business model for organizations that use our platform at scale and can monetize it. The fee-based model funds our freemium users and allows Brevo to keep investing in innovation for profit. In return, the diversity of our freemium users helps make our platform stronger by supporting a variety of needs, increasing our IT and market knowledge, etc. It’s a sustainable model where doing well also means doing good!
