Act-On Software CEO: Automation Evolution Will Scale Marketing’s Role Within Organizations

Published: April 8, 2016

macmillanWith Andy MacMillan, Act-On Software

In an interview with Demand Gen Report, Act-On Software CEO Andy MacMillan discussed the new path the company is taking after the departure of founder and former CEO Raghu Raghavan at the end of March. MacMillan also discussed how he sees the marketing automation landscape evolving to position marketing teams to assist in more aspects of their company’s business.

Demand Gen Report: What is your current vision for Act-On Software?

Andy MacMillan: At Act-On, we love marketing as much as marketers do. We are a marketing automation company with a passion for helping marketers do the best work of their careers by empowering them with incredible technologies and insights to understand their business and engage with their prospects and customers in amazing new ways.

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DGR: You’ve been at the company for roughly six months. How would you describe that time and what changes have you made to meet the above vision for the company?

MacMillan: I have been incredibly impressed with the team and the product. My goal is to continue the momentum of the company and prepare for continued growth by focusing on customer success and product roadmap clarity. We are squarely focused on the CMO and his or her team. We want to make marketing teams hugely successful, and that requires focus on their needs and priorities.

DGR: How will Act-On Founder Raghu Raghavan continue to help the company grow as a board member, and what other roles might he play in the future?

MacMillan: Raghu will always be our founder and a champion for the company. As a board member there are many ways he may continue to help the company, including helping with any individual customer or prospect, or with key corporate programs, such as our Act-For-Good corporate philanthropy program.

DGR: Will customer focus change along with the ongoing changes happening at the company?

MacMillan: We owe our success to our customers.  Act-On has traditionally been a very customer-focused company, as evidenced by our high customer success scores on many of the crowd-sourced product evaluation tools and rankings. It is a big part of our culture and will continue to be as we move forward.  As a company, we have continued to invest in this area, including hiring Matt Zelen, SVP-Customer Success, six months ago to lead that organization.  

DGR: How will the marketing automation landscape in the B2B world evolve?

MacMillan: We are at the beginning of a huge transformation in B2B marketing that I believe will focus on bringing the discipline of marketing automation to more areas of the marketing departments and, in doing so, bring the influence of the marketing department to more areas of the company.  Customer success and engagement will be one of these areas.  I also believe we have seen B2B and B2C marketing coming together in recent years, as B2B companies have looked to B2C for inspiration. That has been great for B2B marketing, but I think we’ve taken those best practices and technologies and are now looking again at how B2B is unique with concepts like account-based marketing, which will be great for B2B marketing departments.

DGR: Where do you see Act-On Software fitting into that future?

MacMillan: Act-On is focused on helping our customers easily adopt the best marketing technology in the world to make them successful in their marketing goals. We have an opportunity to help marketing leaders truly own their brand from prospect to customer to advocate at an account level and a contact level. This will help marketing partner across the company and change the way B2B companies interact with each other.  We’re very excited about the future and anxious to help our customers get there before their competitors.

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