#13 Balancing Automation with Creativity ft. Jacqueline Davis, Solera

Pierce is joined by Jacqueline Davis, Head of North American Marketing at Solera. With two decades of experience in digital marketing at companies like Kivuto and Adobe, she knows the space, and she’s bringing her signature insight and candor to Unsubscribed!

Show Notes

Before accepting a position at Solera, Jacqueline was the Head of Marketing at Kivuto, an educational technology company. Kivuto’s clients are universities and other educational institutions, and the COVID-19 pandemic gave these institutions a push to embrace digital transformation.

As Head of Marketing, Jacqueline was in a unique position, tasked with spreading the word about Kivuto’s offerings while helping her team navigate uncharted territory. She notes that the current climate gives young marketers a great opportunity to come in and show that they can be innovative in their approach to marketing in the midst of a massive disruption like COVID.

Having a younger team is an advantage to Jacqueline. She says that when marketers have been in the game longer, they can get bogged down in formula-based marketing processes, so having a young, technical team is a tremendous asset. She intentionally recruits people with diverse skill sets, like coding and multimedia design, to her marketing team to ensure that they can stay agile.

“I have a young team. I lean on them heavily for innovative ideas and go to market strategies. They’re very technically savvy. I’ve never had a more technical team than I do now”

Kivuto maintains a complex tech stack, so she looks for marketers who can pick up the tools intuitively and jump into projects quickly. She points out that even though she herself takes a scientific, data-driven approach to marketing, she appreciates the creativity and emotion that often drive true connection with a brand.

Her goal is to merge creative marketers and designers with great media/back end people because she knows that when creative, technical, and analytical skill sets come together, it’s a recipe for success.

“the design and the creative and the emotion that you bring out in a brand is still highly relevant.”

Jacqueline also dives into automation and shares best practices for balancing it with creativity. She knows the human element is more important than ever before, so she encourages marketers to think carefully about their cadence, making space for personal connection with a strategic balance between automation and personalization.

For Jacqueline, the key to being successful as a marketer and as a person is to be true to yourself. She encourages marketers, especially young marketers, to not be discouraged if their path doesn’t look like someone else’s. Everyone won’t walk the same road, but if you can look back and be proud of the experiences you’ve had, you’ll be in a good place.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why Jacqueline says cadence – not content – is king
• Why human connection is critical to the future of inside sales
• What drives her crazy about LinkedIn connections

Follow Jacqueline on Linkedin and Twitter