Director, Customer Marketing

Overview

The ideal candidate thrives in an innovative, fast-paced environment and is collaborative, accountable, ready, and empathetic. We're looking for individuals who believe they can accomplish more as a team and create lasting growth for themselves and others.

Key Responsibilities

• Customer Lifecycle and Expansion Strategy

• Develop and lead SolarWinds’ Observability customer marketing strategy, with a primary focus on adoption, retention, and expansion revenue across the customer lifecycle.
• Lead the Tier 1 event strategy for Solarwinds including event promotion, webinar strategy, and account activation.
• Lead and mentor a high-performing team of 6 customer marketers.
• Design and execute full-funnel customer programs that increase product adoption, deepen engagement, and drive measurable revenue impact from existing accounts.
• Define segmentation strategies across the Observability customer base to ensure campaigns and programs are relevant, timely, and tied to expansion potential.
• Leverage AI and marketing automation tools to harness intent signals, usage data, and predictive modeling to identify expansion opportunities and prioritize customer outreach.
• Partner with Corporate Marketing to recruit and develop a community of customer advocates who actively represent SolarWinds in analyst programs, references, and speaking engagements for events and campaigns.
• Oversee customer communications including nurture programs, newsletters, and industry-specific campaigns that reinforce value and drive continued adoption.
• Collaborate with Product Marketing to align customer proof points with go-to-market messaging and competitive positioning.
• Establish a data-driven operating model for customer marketing performance, with clear KPIs tied to retention, expansion pipeline, and revenue contribution.
• Collaborate with the field and Sales teams to equip them with customer-specific content, references, and expansion sales plays.

Executive Engagement Programs

• Partner with the executive team and field leadership to align customer marketing programs with top-tier strategic accounts and thought leadership initiatives.
• Lead executive engagement initiatives including Customer Advisory Boards, CIO roundtables, and strategic relationship programs that strengthen partnerships with top-tier Observability accounts.
• Develop and orchestrate the executive briefing program for strategic customers, in close partnership with field leadership and the executive team.
• Build experiences that deepen executive relationships, surface product feedback, and create pipeline opportunities through curated engagement.

Performance, Analytics & Optimization

• Responsible for the Expand funnel for the Observability business unit. Own measurement against KPIs including lead generation, opportunity creation, pipeline contribution, conversion rates, funnel velocity, and ROI.
• Work with Marketing Analytics to build reporting frameworks that demonstrate customer marketing’s contribution to retention and expansion metrics.
• Use data and experimentation to build predictable, scalable growth engines that can be forecasted, measured, and optimized over time.
• Manage global budget allocations and ensure efficient investment across customer programs and tactics.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of B2B enterprise marketing experience leading Customer Marketing or Lifecycle Marketing programs. Experience in observability, IT infrastructure, network management, or enterprise SaaS strongly preferred.
• Proven success driving upsell, cross-sell, and expansion revenue through customer lifecycle and advocacy initiatives.
• Strong background in building and executing executive engagement programs—Customer Advisory Boards, CIO roundtables, or strategic account experiences.
• Experience developing content and programs that translate customer outcomes into business growth narratives for use across Sales, Marketing, and analyst relations.
• Demonstrated leadership in managing and developing high-performing marketing teams with a culture of performance and accountability.
• Deep collaboration experience with Sales, Customer Success, and Product Marketing to deliver joint retention and expansion outcomes.
• Proficiency with CRM and marketing automation platforms (Salesforce, Marketo). Experience with tools such as Gainsight, 6sense, Goldcast, Qualified, Outreach, Zapier, Clay, Claude or similar tools a plus.
• Strong analytical mindset with evidence of data-driven decision making and performance optimization across the customer lifecycle.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills with executive-level presence and the ability to influence across a matrixed organization.