Heidi Lorenzen, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Accela, talks to Jonathan Andrews about her career-long mission to bring equity into her industry

Exactly four years ago this month, Heidi Lorenzen stepped into her new role as senior vice president for marketing at software provider Accela. When she began reaching out to new customers, she was astonished to find that some government agencies still had a “no software as a service (SaaS)” policy.

“Governments were the last bastion for making this technological transformation, and I saw it was a chance for meaningful change,” she says about joining Accela. “There were some shifts on the national scene that were putting a lot more pressure and responsibility into the hands of local government leaders and I wanted to be part of helping them.”

The company’s customers include “80 percent of leading US cities”. Although a large chunk of the market was already “won”, Lorenzen didn’t take anything for granted and began to reboot the company’s focus on nurturing existing clients.

“We were sitting on a pot of gold with some great customers but we had to ensure they were referenceable if somebody did call them,” she says. “Governments like to learn from each other and especially their neighbours so I dug deep into engagement.”

Lorenzen set about doing this by telling customer’s stories, re-establishing user groups, launching a support advocacy programme and creating an online community.

COVID action

State and local governments’ digital transformation was accelerated when the COVID pandemic began. Governments overnight had to get laptops to their employees to allow them to work remotely and also get all their services online. A challenging concept for most companies let alone governments.

Accela itself had to act fast.

“Our incredible internal team–our engineers and product team–took our platform, and within two weeks, built 13 COVID specific solutions,” she recalls. “On top of that we had to get the word out.”

This included developing new materials, holding webinars, and creating tools for salespeople to use. The webinars received record attendance as customers were “hungry” for information on what the company was offering but also keen to hear what their peers were doing.

Opportunity

The pandemic forced many governments to reimagine their digital software and solutions. Accela has recently qualified for the US$350-billion American Rescue Plan (ARP) COVID-19 response funds available for state and local governments. Now, with once in a lifetime access to this funding, Lorenzen recognises that positive change can be leveraged, not just in a monetary sense but to rethink how governments are operating.

“These funds give governments an opportunity to reset,” she explains. “How they work and how they serve their citizens, and the experiences that they can create for citizens, not to mention the experience you create for employees.”

She believes this is an opportunity for governments to market themselves better and to attract talent by modernising their technology.

“If you’re a really great technologist, you’re not going to be too excited to work on outdated systems,” she reasons.

She recognises that the role of Chief Information Officer has changed dramatically from “the fix-it folks” to leading the digital transformation of government. She loves the interaction with the cities and believes this is the true soul of the industry.

“You’re marketing to humans but then suddenly it was all about brand and advertising and you could start measuring with all the marketing tools that were available and it lost the soul. It just all became about metrics,” she says. “A lot in the industry seemed to not care about the content messaging that was being put through all these tools, and that drove me nuts.”

She has even coined a new phrase, the “PE ratio”– Picasso Einstein rather than price earnings— where the left and right side of the brain come together to make the most effective marketing.

“You’ve got to understand the art behind it, the soul behind it, as well as really be intellectually curious about the data because you can uncover segments that you may not have been aware of,” she explains.

The best marketing is about a balance of having a powerful message, understanding an audience, meeting their needs and having the technology serve it versus the other way round.

Within Accela, the team measures itself by its contribution to the pipeline and is focused on alignment with business goals.

“We could have the best marketing KPIs in the world with open rates and attendance rates but if those are not ultimately converting to opportunities and revenue there’s no purpose,” she explains.

Lorenzen refers to this as her North Star–pipeline dollar creation–and making sure it converts to something sales can follow up on.

With most governments still wary or restricting travel to in-person events, email—and a high-quality database—continue to be the most effective tool for Lorenzen to reach the market. Increasingly, and over the past four years, she has also seen a dramatic increase in LinkedIn interaction not just in terms of engagement but in driving webinar registrations and core calls to action.

Starting out

Her own career began somewhat differently. Initially she wanted to be a teacher and majored in East Asian studies, including one semester studying in Taiwan. She ended up returning to begin her career in Taiwan by editing five international trade magazines for two years.

As Taiwan slowly emerged from martial law at the end of the 1980s and with a growing economy, she also helped edit and write ad copy for Taiwanese manufacturers who were new in positioning themselves to international buyers.

“It was really eye opening to see what the manufacturers thought would influence and sell to international buyers,” she says. “That was when I first saw the power of positioning.”

It wasn’t until nine years later after working at Bloomberg Businessweek in New York–which gave her exposure to branding–that she began her first job with “marketing in the job title”. A former colleague from Businessweek had moved to Polycom, a video and voice technology provider.

“It was when he went to Polycom in Singapore, he reached out to me and said, ‘We desperately need some good marketing thinking’,” she says. “They effectively launched my marketing career.”

Despite a B2B role, it was from living in Asia that she learnt to work and partner with governments. She saw what a tighter alignment between business and government could achieve and exposed her to government thinking that gave her a deep appreciation of its value.

Women in tech

As she moved into the tech sector she came face-to-face with the disparity of women in the sector, particularly among leadership. Throughout her career she says that being a woman never “felt a challenge” but recognised that it could be for others. So it was in the mid-1990s at McGraw Hill that she launched the first women-in-management committee.

“I thought a decade from then we’d have equity!” she says. “But I really saw the disparity at other levels across tech and became very passionate about it because I saw how critical it is to have diverse viewpoints brought into how we’re shaping exponential technology and how are we building AI.”

In the last year she became president of the Women Executives Channel Advisory Board and is a member of Chief, a network built to support and advance women in positions of power, and the Athena Alliance, which connects women executive leaders and helps them break through the barriers that line the “last mile” of their career.

“I’ve seen how important it is for technology, and then also saw how important just in general it is for companies to remember that they’re ultimately marketing and selling to humans,” she says. “In order to bring that humanity into my marketing it’s important to bring equity and that has been the impetus of my career over the decades.”