Unsung Heroes – the customer success manager: Paul Ioakimidis, Outbrain
The Drum's 'Unsung Heroes' series is a celebration of the people in the industry who slog hard behind the limelight for their companies, brands and clients. As they are seldom in the spotlight for their contribution to the success of campaigns, this is their time to shine.
In his role, Ioakimidis says change is something that happens constantly and it certainly keeps you on your toes.
Paul Ioakimidis of Outbrain says his role as a customer success manager is being 'a campaign doctor with an email address who is always on call'. That is because he often has to ensure that all the cogs behind an advertising campaign for a client are running smoothly.
Why is your job important?
As a customer success manager at Outbrain, I'm responsible for driving continued revenue generation and developing relationships with our clients. The key aspect of my role is to ensure that our clients' advertising campaigns run on our platform as effectively and as efficiently as possible.
What is the hardest and stressful part of your job?
Other than the constant flow of emails, it would be achieving high levels of client satisfaction and ensuring the delivery of campaigns according to plan while exceeding expectations for the client.
What is the most rewarding part of your job?
Mainly seeing the results in a campaign's success and knowing the hard work behind the scenes to get all the cogs working together really pays off. Also working in a close team environment feeding off each other and learning something new is always rewarding.
First thing that comes to people’s minds when you tell them your job?
That I’m a campaign doctor.
How would you correct/explain to them what you do then?
That I’m a campaign doctor with an email address who is always on call.
Is there anything you want to change in your job?
In my role, change is something that happens constantly and it certainly keeps you on your toes.
Who is someone you want to emulate in your industry?
There is no one person I would want to emulate specifically. I find I want to better myself by learning more from those that work around me.
Which was the campaign that you worked on, that you are most proud of?
One of my favourite campaigns that I'm currently working on and I'm very proud of is for Tourism New Zealand, as I think that it shows how important the customer success/ad ops function is to a campaign’s success.
Working closely with our smart, professional partners at TNZ's agency Blue 449, we learned their operation needs and workflow, after which I then mirrored this all at our end.
Bringing empathy, creativity, agility and best practice into ad-ops has been key to powering one of our most successful agency and brand relationships thus far. The teams have been working with us for well over a year now and throughout that time we have seen great success and continued growth. Also, New Zealand is one of my favourite destinations, which is always a plus!
If you weren’t a customer success manager, what would you be?
I would love a job like David Attenborough's, although my narrating skills may not be up to scratch!
If you think of someone who deserves to be part of this series, please get in touch with Shawn Lim and nominate them. You can read the previous feature on the on the recruiter, here.