For this inaugural Tech Corner, we welcome Jenna Steven, an SEM Strategist at QVC & HSN. Jenna graduated from Temple University in 2015 and has an M.S., Integrated Marketing Communications from Eastern University. We were very excited to sit down with Jenna and chat with her about MarTech and more.
AMA: How did you discover Marketing was meant for you?
Jenna: I was drawn to marketing because I’ve always been a creative person. I discovered Marketing after taking an Introduction to Advertising class with Professor Dana Saewitz. During undergrad, I worked with sports marketing and nonprofits. I realized how much I also enjoyed the analytical side of marketing—solving puzzles and technology challenges made marketing even more appealing to me. I appreciate that my current role allows me to be anthropological and sociological, tying together everything about marketing that I fell in love with.
AMA: What does your day-to-day look like?
Jenna: I spend a lot of time in Google, and Microsoft paid search tools. Dealing with audience lists and ensuring initiatives are met, driving consumers down the path to purchase or conversion. I manage various campaigns, encapsulating thousands of products.
My job is to scale these paid search efforts, optimize them, and ensure we are reaching the right audience through list segmentation, landing page messaging, and ad messaging. I work with our electronic communications team to help achieve the messaging piece as we continually test messaging to discover how best to reach our target audience.
AMA: What Marketing Technologies (Martech) used in your organization is your favorite/why?
Jenna: Technology plays a massive role in my job. As an SEM Strategist, I am thrilled that my organization uses Optmyzr daily. Optmyzr is an account management software for paid search. At QVC & HSN we are lucky enough to be able to work with the founder of the tool, Frederick Vallaeys, one-on-one. This allows us to be nimble and create solutions within the platform that are highly specific to our company.
The tool helps us place bids and track data sources. It allows us to have a level of granularity in our efforts that we wouldn’t get by simply using Google’s “black box.” I like that the tool allows us to be very strategic and hyper granular in where we invest our dollar. Because of our investment in the tool and the customization, our customers’ lifetime value is very unique to us.
AMA: How open are you to implementing new forms of Martech in your organization?
Jenna: I think it is essential to have systems and tools to take back and hone in on things we can control. You have to keep an open mind with the number of technology options in the SEM space. Take Dataweave for example. It is a fantastic option if you need to aggregate analytical information like price comparisons, bid competitiveness, and more. With SEM, the consumers are telling you what they want, and it changes daily. Tools that allow you to focus on a customer profile target and identify when someone is online are crucial in SEM.