AnyRoad, the leader in Experience Relationship Management (ERM), welcomed Lauren Sommers as its first Chief Marketing Officer. A marketing, events, and branding expert with more than 15 years of experience, Lauren will lead the company’s strategic global marketing efforts and help shape an entirely new category of software powering consumer events and experiences, as brands around the world look to capitalize on the experience economy.
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Lauren most recently served as Interim CMO at Hopin, a virtual events startup that redefined how people connected across the globe during the pandemic and achieved a valuation of nearly $8 billion. There, she led a 40-person marketing team, which provided 70% of the company’s sales pipeline to help it grow to over $100 million in ARR in under two years. Prior to Hopin, Lauren served as the VP of Corporate and Brand Marketing at customer intelligence platform Gainsight, where she oversaw global integrated marketing programs including corporate events and field marketing. She previously held leadership roles at Marketo, Blue Yonder and App Annie.
“Creating and measuring brand experiences is so important for building lasting customer relationships – but as an event marketer myself, and someone who has been selling to brands for many years, I know firsthand the challenges that exist in the industry,” said Lauren Sommers, Chief Marketing Officer at AnyRoad. “AnyRoad brings clear value and ROI to an area that often lacks any real measurement or data. I look forward to playing a role in changing how brands invest in experiential and helping them take advantage of data to drive affinity and loyalty.”
Lauren joins AnyRoad at a time when more than 400 brands delivering 200,000 in-person experiences every month rely on the platform to optimize their experiential programs and capture meaningful data to forge stronger relationships with consumers. To keep up with global demand for the experience economy, the company recently raised a $47 million Series B funding round and has made several other strategic hires, including Iain Hassell as its first Chief Financial Officer and Greg Klingaman as VP of Strategy and Field Operations, EMEA – its first Europe-based leadership hire – previously of Diageo.
“The next decade’s most successful brands – the ones that build actual emotional connections – will look more like experience providers than traditional goods businesses,” said Jonathan Yaffe, co-founder and CEO of AnyRoad. “Our customers are evolving their businesses constantly, and as we continue to scale alongside them, I could not have dreamed of a more suited candidate to take on our first CMO role. Lauren’s deep SaaS knowledge combined with her passion for building human-first connections through experiences will help bring our organization to the next level.”