MarTech Interview with Stefanie Nastou, Vice President of Marketing at TeamViewer

Kindly brief us about yourself and your role as the Vice President of Marketing at TeamViewer.

I started out on the agency side of the business before I moved to the client side and have been a marketing executive for large B2B and B2C software companies that include Oracle, OpenText and Amdocs. I have built and managed teams that include business development, brand, public relations, digital marketing and field marketing. I am passionate about marketing and how it’s evolved over the years as a direct revenue engine that has morphed more into a sales function since 80% of the buying decision is made online before anyone even speaks to a sales rep. This is why working alongside the sales team is essential to delivering results.

I joined TeamViewer about a year ago to help build a demand generation engine across multiple customer segments that includes SMB and Enterprise. TeamViewer is the market leader for remote connectivity software, with 625,000 subscribers, installed in 2.5 billion devices around the world and our solutions are reducing carbon emissions globally. Additionally, TeamViewer is driving digital transformation with augmented reality solutions that help digitalize workflows and deliver productivity and efficiency with the world’s frontline workforce.

As a seasoned executive in the B2B software space, what are the key opportunities you’ve observed for women in leadership roles? How have these opportunities evolved over the years?

The marketing function has always included a large percentage of females, the difference now is that there is increased representation of women and a growing importance of gender diversity in leadership positions. Many organizations today are actively seeking out women for leadership positions and offering leadership development programs specifically tailored to women. These programs provide mentorship and leadership skill building to help enhance a women’s opportunity for a leadership position. There is also a very big push today to ensure gender diversity on company boards, in fact almost every Fortune 5000 company has a KPI that represents a gender diversity percentage that they are goaled on.

Women have been more empowered and are trailblazing growth but there are still challenges with the leadership position ratios that still heavily swayed toward males. I’m proud to say that TeamViewer has a very strong diversity and inclusion program, but we should continue to drive change and continuously promote and support gender diversity programs to tip the scales with equal representation at the decision-making table.

How has technology, particularly in the realm of marketing technology, transformed the way companies collaborate effectively as they grow and scale their operations?

The Martech stack has become a pivotal component in marketing operations to help fuel growth. There are three components that have transformed marketing:

• Centralized data management – This includes your customer relationship management (CRM) system and your content management system (CMS). These systems are key to understanding your customers, their preferences, and behaviors, engagement and this centralized approach provides a single source of data that can be accessed by various departments across the organization outside of marketing. For example customer retention, customer support, finance etc.
• Data driven decisions with centralized analytics – Data is the core component of a marketing strategy. You need to have an analytics platform that will provide insights on campaign performance, customer behaviors, market trending, channel and content performance, and this data needs to be accessed in real-time so that you pivot when required to accelerate growth.
• Marketing Automation – The marketing stack should be carefully curated to include the tools you need to help automate and manage the channels that are necessary for growth, for example, email marketing, social media scheduling and analysis, influencer marketing, content management and distribution, lead nurturing, event management. There are a number of leading tools to choose from but the stack should be carefully curated so each tool complements the other.

Work/life balance is an essential consideration for many professionals. How is technology helping companies offer a greater work/life balance to their employees?

The post-covid world has given us a lot more flexibility for hybrid or remote work. I have remained a fully remote employee since post-pandemic and most of my team are remote as well. In my opinion, you are more productive working remotely, in fact I’ve seen people burn out quickly if boundaries are not established, like stopping for lunch or not working in the evening.
Using platforms like Teams, Zoom, Slack gives you the flexibility to have virtual face to face meetings with members of your team at anytime from anywhere so you are always connected. This provides an agile environment to get things done quickly. Also, with remote IT support software such as TeamViewer Tensor, an IT issue or update can be resolved in minutes, so there is no need to bring your laptop into the office for IT when they can perform all these tasks remotely from anywhere on any device. Additionally, hybrid and remote work is helping to reduce our carbon footprint.

As a woman in the technology industry, what insights can you share about the unique challenges and opportunities you’ve encountered throughout your career? How can organizations foster a more inclusive environment and support the success of women in technology?

When I first started out there were very few women in the technology industry, but over the years it’s evolved to include more women in senior positions, and a lot more women in VP level positions. However, even now when I look around the senior leadership teams and boards, I still see a larger ratio of male to female and we have to recognize this and continue to drive change. I have been very fortunate to have had incredible mentors that have helped me build my leadership skills, and confidence so that I always advocated for myself.

Women are not good at self-promotion so their work needs to be recognized and rewarded more often. There are more diversity lead programs at organizations today, as well as leadership programs that are specifically catered to female executives with mentorship. It’s important to continue to promote these programs so that we can drive change with more leadership diversity. My advice to any female executive who is experiencing challenges, or thinks they are not being treated equitably is to speak up and make your voice heard. This is the only way to drive change and pave the way for the next generation of female executives that need help cracking the glass ceiling.

Considering your experience leading global teams at various software companies, what are some effective marketing strategies or martech tools that have proven successful in driving growth and achieving business objectives?

There are a number of marketing strategies that need to be considered, but I would say the top four are:

• Clearly define your customer persona and customer segments – Understand your customer, what are their key pain points, where do they do research, who are the key social media influencers for this segment, and understand the local nuances since it will be different in every country.
• Develop a content strategy that will resonate with your customers – Build content that will resonate with your key persona segments and begin with business value. You need to communicate that you understand their challenges and show them the value your technology can deliver and showcase local customer brands that have implemented your solution.
• Digital marketing strategy – Tailor your digital campaigns to your specific markets and develop an SEO strategy that will work in each local market. Each region has different influencers so it’s important to understand who they are and ensure your social media team is working closely with them to amplify your message. Paid advertising varies extensively country to country so it’s important to understand the channels that are right for your persona and leverage them.
• Be data driven – Use the data to fuel and validate your marketing strategy. Testing is important to get to the right outcome, so make this a best practice on your team and use the data to understand what customers are engaging with, what might be working in one region should be replicated in another, you can use the data to replicate success globally.

With the rapid advancement of technology, data privacy, and security have become paramount concerns. How does TeamViewer address these concerns and ensure the protection of customer data while offering remote connectivity solutions?

TeamViewer Tensor is our Enterprise grade connectivity platform for remote IT support and management of devices. Tensor has secured the highest security certifications to help mitigate cyber security risks. Some of the features of the product include:

• Conditional Access – Provides resources in your enterprise access based on specific conditions such as user credentials location, and device.
• Device security and User Management – Get full control over who has access to specific devices. Apply special permissions and licenses, and assign settings policies to teams, individuals and devices.
• Single Sign-on (SSO) – Save time and effort by enabling users to access remote connectivity through an SSO identify provider.
• Enterprises can monitor a growing fleet of devices on a near real-time basis with active alerts.

In your role as the Vice President of Marketing, what are the key marketing trends or innovations you foresee shaping the martech landscape in the near future?

• Artificial Intelligence – AI is changing the way marketers workand marketers will need to learn how to leverage the technology to get better insights on customer behaviors and patterns and utilize this in their go-to-market strategies. This agility will allow them to analyze customer engagements in real-time and pivot the approach based on the outcomes.
• More investment in analytics -Data is the life blood of successful marketing. Marketers will use predictive analytics to understand customer behaviors and be proactive rather than reactive when they’re engaging with their target audiences.
• Personalization – Is used today but has become much more of a requirement for B2B customers that are looking for organizations to understand their unique business requirements and challenges and are not looking for a one size fits all. Using a platform that can deliver personalized product messaging, social, and email with dynamic content is key to driving higher engagement and quality lead generation.
• Virtual & Augmented Reality – TeamViewer technology provides augmented reality solutions to frontline workers which helps digitalize workflows to improve overall productivity and efficiency. For marketing it’s the same: businesses are using augmented reality to transform the customer experience, giving them the power to experience a fashion runway show as if they are sitting in the front row, or a virtual walk through of a new home they are about to purchase. Retail marketers are leading the way with the use of augmented reality with many other industries to follow.

TeamViewer serves a global customer base. How do you approach marketing strategies and adapt them to cater to diverse markets and cultural nuances across different regions?

It’s important to have a localization strategy. Localization involves tailoring the message and content to resonate with the cultural and behavioral preferences of the target audience segment you are trying to reach in each market. For example, the stories you tell about how customers are using the technology should be a brand that is well recognized in that country so that the customer recognizes the brand. The brand creative should also speak to the people in any given country. So, if you’re running an ad campaign in Asia, the colors, messaging, photos should appeal to that customer segment or demographic in that country. You stay true to your brand, but the messaging and content speaks to the local community.

Finally, what advice would you give to aspiring marketers and individuals looking to excel in the technology industry, particularly in leadership roles?

I get this question a lot, and I always say be true to yourself, follow your gut and push the envelope even when everyone around you is saying it won’t work. Marketing is about trial and error and big results are built on taking risks and learning from your mistakes. Also, find a great mentor, and ask them to be your mentor. They will be able to guide you and offer objective feedback and it helps to bounce ideas off them.