Newly private Marketo is promoting Chandar Pattabhiram, group vice president of marketing, to senior vice president and chief marketing officer, effective immediately. Pattabhiram will report to CEO Phil Fernandez and sit on Marketo’s executive staff.
Former CMO Sanjay Dholakia is leaving the company to spend more time with his family, according to Marketo. In another change, Chief Administrative Officer Fred Ball will also be leaving the company.
The executive shuffle comes exactly a week after Vista Equity Partners closed on its acquisition of the San Mateo, Calif.-based marketing automation provider.
Pattabhiram: Big Shoes to Fill
Pattabhiram joined Marketo in 2014 from Badgeville, where he oversaw the company’s marketing. Before that he was vice president of product and channel marketing for IBM Cast Iron. Pattabhiram also spent time at Andersen Consulting as an advisor to Fortune 500 companies in the high-tech, retail and oil and gas industries.
While at Marketo Pattabhiram, among other accomplishments, has spearheaded the recent rollout of several Marketo products.
Even with this CV to his credit, Pattabhiram will be stepping into some rather big shoes.
Dholakia Guided Marketo's Pivot
Dholakia joined Marketo through the acquisition of Crowd Factory in 2012 and is departing after leading Marketo through some strong growth years, an IPO and most recently, a rebranding.
Dholakia also created Marketing Nation, Market’s network of customers and partners that eventually crystallized into the company's annual Summit.
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Most recently, he has been instrumental in helping to reshape the Marketo brand — namely its pivot to focus on enterprise-sized companies while still keeping its mid-market base.
Dholakia explained it this way to CMSWire in an interview earlier this year, "We're just expanding. It’s opening the aperture to more growth markets. We're certainly not abandoning the mid-market."
Not that this is new ground for Pattabhiram. In that same interview with CMSWire, he gave us a deep dive tour of the architecture that will support this enterprise push. Code named Project Orion, it is designed deliver big data scalability and transactional support for business-to-consumer (B2C) use cases.
"B2C and B2B are converging in terms of best practices," said Pattabhiram. "Lead nurturing best practices from B2B can be used by consumer marketers, and personalization strategies that consumer marketers use are leveraged by B2B marketers. And ultimately these create more engaging relationships … To do that, the difference between B2B and B2C is scale."
Long-Standing Succession Plans
Both Dholakia's and Ball's departures were part of of long-standing succession plans. Both executives agreed to remain through the company's acquisition by Vista Equity to ensure a smooth transition for the next phase of leadership.
"I have been thrilled these past years to watch Chandar's impact on our business and his growth as a leader," Dholakia said in a prepared statement. "Chandar's passion, determination and dedication to Marketo is unmatched, and he will no doubt take this company and organization to the next level of growth and success."