Smita Wadhawan has been named Chief Marketing Officer at Constant Contact, after having held the same role at sustainability ratings firm EcoVadis and at SimplePractice, a practice management platform for medical offices. Prior to her time at SimplePractice, Wadhawan served in marketing leadership positions at GoDaddy, Intuit and PayPal.
"Smita stood out as a marketing leader with a rare combination of strategic depth and operational excellence, especially when it comes to understanding and connecting with small businesses," said Frank Vella, CEO of Constant Contact.
In an interview with Newsweek several weeks after she started on July 14, Wadhawan discussed why she joined Constant Contact, her onboarding process, and her advice for aspiring marketing leaders.
Newsweek: How have your previous experiences helped you in taking on this new opportunity at Constant Contact?
Smita Wadhawan: At GoDaddy, we primarily served micro businesses, the freelancers, the giggers, entrepreneurs, the dreamers, as we would call them. We spent a lot of time obsessing about what they care for and then creating products and marketing programs that will ultimately resonate with them...When the Constant Contact opportunity came along, it just fit like the right fit from where my interest lies, what I feel very passionate [about] and deeply committed to. And when I looked at what Constant Contact could deliver, knowing what a great brand it has and the heritage it has, there is just so much opportunity where marketing could drive a very strong impact.
Where did you find your interest for helping small business owners?
My husband is a small business owner, so seeing his entrepreneur journey as we've been together, I've seen the highs and the lows, the passion, the grit that it takes to succeed, and the fact that you have to wear so many hats and worry about so many things ... that a lot of us just take for granted when we work for large corporations. I think it's that passion that makes me very empathetic towards what small business go through.
How did you navigate your own career path as an outsider in many ways?
I grew up in India. A lot of the things that I learned growing up were pretty vital and still continue to be very important for me as a leader. One of those components is just being very open and adaptive to change and to a new environment, and cultural sensitivity.
As I reflect on my time, mostly in Silicon Valley tech companies, it's an interesting place, especially as a woman leader who's trying to figure out what their own voice is going to be. It can be very intimidating... You look at the gender gap in tech, and it's pretty stark, and in marketing, too. Then you look around, and there's very few people, if any, that look like me.
I think finding the right set of mentors, who would advocate for you, who would give you the right nudge, plays a very important role. [And] then working proactively towards making sure that you make every use of every opportunity to speak your mind, to share and contribute, and get over the imposter syndrome that can exist.
I think those baby steps can shape you as a leader, and that is something I do even today. If I have a point of view, I make it a point to share my point of view.
How is the field of marketing handling the opportunities of emerging technology and what are your lessons from previous technology revolutions in the field?
If you look at anything that we do in marketing, what we were doing 20 years ago is not something that you can just adapt. And it just continues to change. I think it's a very fast-moving, agile discipline, but particularly in the past couple of years with AI and some of the digital tools, it's become very different.
It's important for someone to be successful in marketing to be really curious, really open to change, and have a growth mindset. You may not always know all the answers, but you can understand customer insights, how to have empathy for customers, understanding your market, your product, how your customers shop, are all key to being a successful marketer, and that hasn't changed. AI just unlocks various capabilities for you to work smarter and better.
How can small businesses successfully leverage emerging technology like automation and agentic tools?
The challenge small businesses have is they don't have the resources that a lot of large enterprises and corporations have to make AI work for them. They rely a lot on people like us to give them the tools that are already AI-enabled because at the end of the day if I'm a small business owner I really don't care much if the solution is delivered by human or AI. What I care for is 'Is it easy for me? Is it scalable? Does it allow me to grow my business?'
For companies like ours who serve small business customers it is our job to make sure that we make our products our software our tools and technology so easy using AI or otherwise that a small business owner can count on us as a partner. They shouldn't be the one worrying about the new AI tool that's come up in marketing. It's our job to make it easy for small business owners. So that's kind of how I think about it: Let us do all the heavy lifting so you as a small business owner don't have to worry about it.
How have your first weeks been at Constant Contact? How have you acclimated to a new organization?
The preparation begins even before you start. When you are thinking about an opportunity, any senior leader would tell you that they are already thinking during the interview process what would they do if they were to step into this role so that's something that I had been doing for a while as I was interviewing.
When you then start a job I think it's more a question of validating some of your hypotheses and assumptions you already have based on scanning the company,the marketing that they do which I did as well.And I had a hypothesis.So for me,the first few weeks were all about getting the information,the data,to support the hypothesis,validating some of those.